Deadly Diseases and the Collective Adoption of International Environmental Agreements.

Transboundary pollution problems cause different deadly diseases such as cancers, heart, and lung diseases. (1) Although states are mandated to be cautious of such health implications, it is not emphasised enough whether health influences states to adopt environmental laws in the Global Environmental Politics (GEP) literature. (2) Therefore, to help fill in the gap in the GEP literature, this research examines the correlation between diseases caused by transboundary pollution and the timeliness at which states collectively adopted six transboundary pollution laws.

This research agenda is especially important because, by regulating transboundary pollution, environmental laws improve health protection. Also, moving forward, environmental laws will become even more important for curbing the exacerbation of deadly diseases caused by severe climate changes. (3) Moreover, in the Global Health Politics (GHP) literature, deadly diseases caused by tobacco pollution motivated states to adopt international health laws. (4) Consequently, it is theoretically argued in this research that deadly disease influence states to regulate transboundary pollution and therefore, can affect the timeliness of adopting environment laws. It is hypothesised that the greater the deadly disease(s) caused by transboundary pollution; states are more likely to collectively adopt environmental law.

Three case studies are used to test the hypothesis. Each case study is a comparison of a pair of two environmental laws that each regulate different air, marine, and land transboundary pollution problems, some of which, cause more deadly diseases. Studying multiple cases is important if we are to understand whether the influence of deadly disease on law adoption time is generalizable or not. Nonetheless, in sum, the findings for all the case studies provide support for the hypothesis, therefore demonstrating a relationship between diseases caused by transboundary pollution and the adoption time of environmental laws.

However, before proceeding to the case studies, the next section is a concise review of relevant GEP and GHP literatures that build up to the theoretical argument and hypothesis. The remainder of the research expounds on the methodology and data limitations, the findings and case studies, and finally, the conclusion, which includes suggestions and implications for future research and policy.

Factors that Influence Collective Action in Global Environmental Politics

Although transboundary pollution problems have since the 1960s been major sources of diseases, it was not until 2017 that the Environment Assembly (EA) reached a collective resolution on the strong linkage between environment and health, and the need to address both issues jointly. (5) This includes using health as a precautionary approach for addressing transboundary pollution and taking into consideration the health benefits. Others include facilitating regular scientific exchange between the environment and health epistemic communities as well as increasing collaboration between the UNEP and World Health Organization (WHO) to avoid duplication and improve effectiveness alongside relevant UN stakeholders, secretariats, institutions, and organizations like the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) etc.

The EA, which is the highest decision-making body of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), has near universal state membership (i.e., 193 states) and is responsible for 'setting the agenda' on transboundary environmental issues. (6) The UNEP was created by the United Nations (UN) at the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment to directly govern and spearhead the creation of international environmental laws, thus situating the UN at the centre of environmental. (7) However, on the EA's environmental agenda, the subject of health compared to other matters such as Sustainable Development remains marginalised. (8) Moreover, states are not obligated by the EA to address the health consequences of transboundary pollution because the EA's resolution only encourages precaution.

Even in the GEP literature, it is generally unknown whether diseases caused by transboundary pollution influence states to collectively adopt environmental laws. Instead, in the literature, structural, environmental, and institutional factors as well as political and economic differences are among the key factors that influence collective action. (9) It is nonetheless important to mention that there are other factors that affect the timeliness of adopting environmental laws, which include security issue-linkage, global civil society, state political system and membership in regional organizations etc., but they are not reviewed here due to limited space. The GEP literature has a lot to say about how these other factors influence how states respond to international laws under different conditions. (10)

Structurally, the UNEP, for instance, is not a world government and is neither an autonomous independent organization with its own financial, legal, and administrative resources. (11) Even the UNEP's parent organization the UN is also not a world government with overarching authority and jurisdiction above all political entities including states. (12) States are the primary actors involved in making laws, thus making them the supreme decision-making body of each environmental law. This is why the UNEP is rather dependent on the state-led EA and is unable to enforce state participation. (13) Therefore, also, because there is no world government above state actors to control their behaviour and coerce cooperation, states have less incentive to collectively adopt environmental laws. (14)

Another structural disadvantage of the UNEP where it pertains to collective action is the UN's framework convention-protocol process of making laws, which is critiqued for its decentralised state led governance design. The UN framework convention-protocol process is a lengthy law-making process because states anticipate cooperation to continue into the future and therefore, usurp and stall the process by bargaining harder and for longer so that joint decision-making reflects their closest preference. (15) Hence, the process of environmental law-making within the UN often leads to collective action problems. The process of environmental law-making is for instance often an area of contested irreconcilable preferences, decision-making power struggles, and disputes over the distribution of responsibilities, costs, and benefits of joint arrangements, which overall disrupts the law-making process. (16)

More generally, due to the UN's framework convention-protocol process of making laws, the UNEP like most UN organizations and programmes is said to merely function like an intergovernmental forum for states to negotiate environmental laws. (17) Hence why some scholars have advocated for a more centrally coordinated and hierarchical governance system, which they argue can be achieved by upgrading not just the UN but the entire UNEP to a world environmental organization with enhanced oversight on all environmental laws, and with its own financial, legal, and administrative resources. (18)

Furthermore, environmental problems in comparison to other issue areas pose additional collective action challenges for cooperation. Firstly, most environmental problems, for instance, stem from the fact that the shared environment is a non-excludable public good that is open to be utilized by a large number of rationally self-interested actors that live within and across multiple states. (19) Therefore, in the absence of an overarching world government, it is difficult to restrict self-interested states from benefiting from the provision of a public environmental good via collective action even when they free-ride.

Moreover, states are more likely to collectively adopt environmental laws when there is scientific certainty that the environmental impact and scope of a transboundary pollution problem is immediate and great. (20) Otherwise, states tend to negotiate harder and for longer, therefore delaying the adoption of environmental laws as they await further scientific understanding. (21) Moreover, scientific uncertainty makes it more challenging and costly for states to identify and develop solutions to address transboundary pollution problems. (22)

Correspondingly, because of the way states respond to the environmental impacts of transboundary pollution, it is possible to infer that they will respond likewise to the health impacts of transboundary pollution particularly when there is scientific certainty that transboundary pollution causes deadly diseases. (23) Therefore, states, as theoretically argued in the next section, should be more likely to adopt environmental laws when there is scientific certainty that transboundary pollution problems cause deadly diseases.

Nonetheless, still on environmental factors, the likelihood of states adopting environmental laws further decreases when the environmental impact of transboundary pollution is unevenly distributed among multiple diverse states. (24) This is because states that are least affected, compared to those greatly affected, are likely to have differing priorities, cost, and preferences, among other differences, that cause deadlock and freeriding. (25) It is however in such conditions that states more likely adopt flexible environmental laws, as opposed to rigid ones, because they are widely acceptable to diverse states. (26)

Rigid laws, according to the literature, are strict institutional arrangements because they restrict or ban pollution whereas flexible or less rigid laws rarely restrict/ban or do so incrementally. (27) States are therefore less likely to adopt rigid laws since they are demanding of states and/or infringe on their autonomy. (28)

Finally, states have different political and economic...