Given the rising public aspirations for better environmental quality and demands on local and national budgets, international collaboration provides a mechanism to extend the reach and efficacy of environmental spending. The new organization should be structured to take advantage of the fact that the environmental investments of the private sector are six times greater than those of governments and intergovernmental bodies. Making the business community an active and innovative partner in the effort to promote environmental technology development and dissemination should thus be a priority. Parallel to the issue of how individual countries benefit is the need to tailor the mandate of the new global environmental organization to allay fears that it will compromise national sovereignty. Moreover, some environmental problems are inherently international in scope with emissions and resulting damage spilling across political boundaries without regard to the pollutants' origin making a system of pure national sovereignty on environmental matters insufficient.
Ecological interdependence is a fact.
Cooperation to meet shared challenges from preserving freshwater resources to limiting the harmful effects of greenhouse gasses is critical. The only choice is whether this collaboration occurs explicitly, within the context of a structured program of global environmental governance, or implicitly, without systematic attention and focus. One of the reasons that many traditionally powerful states may find the prospect of a global environmental organization threatening is that it raises the specter of voting procedures that seem inappropriate. Special safeguards are also necessary to ensure that the perceived tension between development goals and environmental aims is minimized. The principle of shared and differentiated responsibilities should be at the center of efforts to adjudicate a fair balance of rights and responsibilities with regard to environmental issues at the global scale.