Sovereignty, Federalism, and the Identification of Local Environmental Problems

Terry Anderson and Bishop Grewell have recently argued that misplaced concerns about international environmental degradation have adverse effects on US foreign policy and US interests. Trade suffers and economic growth falters, thereby reducing resources available for environmental protection. Sovereignty and accountability are both compromised. To avert these problems, they recommend a variety of policy changes including promotion of economic growth, curtailment of environmentally destructive policies, and support for sovereign states that are respectful of property rights and the rule of law. One of their recommendations in particular merits more attention. Anderson and Grewell write, "If an environmental problem can be handled internally, there is no need for international regulations that encourage encroachment on sovereign powers and discourage democratic accountability."1 The strength of this recommendation depends on what is meant by "handled internally." Given the trend toward making more and more environmental problems international, it would be useful to have a test to identify those problems that can be handled internally. Such a test could provide a principled means to identify environmental problems best left to local authorities. International bodies or sovereign states could pledge to pursue agreements on only those environmental problems that are truly international in scope. In this article, I elaborate on the Anderson and Grewell recommendation by arguing for a test to identify which environmental problems can be handled internally and for a commitment to focus foreign policy on international, not local, environmental problems. I first illustrate how international environmental regulations can cause harm by exploring how the Basel Convention stopped the export of scrap ships to south Asia.2 I then review how federal environmental policies in the United States are imposed as solutions for all manner of local environmental problems and point out that a trend towards centralized environmental policymaking at the international level is likely because the causes of centralized decisionmaking within the United States also exist at an international level. I then outline an economically sound approach to identify environmental problems that can be handled internally and develop a practical definition of such problems. Finally, I make recommendations that might help focus international organizations' involvement in environmental policy development only where local solutions are inappropriate. I. THE PROBLEM: ENVIRONMENTALISM AND TRADE The problem of environmentalism as a threat to sovereignty is often quite abstract. Authors describe the problem in terms of reduced democratic accountability and amorphous reductions to trade and economic growth. One instructive example that may help to clarify the nature of the problem involves the Basel Convention on disposal of hazardous materials.3 This treaty and its administration by the United States have scuttled some valuable US exports to other countries and thus reduced welfare in the United States and abroad. The Basel Convention restricts the export for disposal of materials deemed hazardous, including a class of persistent organic carcinogenic pollutants called polychlorinated biphenyls ("PCBs").4 Electrical equipment manufacturers used PCBs in liquid form in large quantities for decades both in the United States and abroad. In 1976 Congress gave the Environmental Protection Agency ("EPA") authority to regulate the production, use, and sale of PCBs after reports that they accumulated in fish tissue and hindered reproduction of piscivorous birds.5 PCBs were subsequently found in the insulation protecting electrical equipment on older ships. The EPA and the scientific community generally have not presented evidence that PCBs occurring in solids in low concentration pose a significant risk.6 But the Basel Convention, at least as the EPA interpreted it, treated these PCBs like the genuinely hazardous, liquid PCBs. …