"Green" instrument of foreign policy
The rapid development of industry and population growth after the Second World War made the world community think about the human impact on the environment. Since then, the number of international organizations dealing with the environmental agenda has increased significantly, a lot of new green programs and roadmaps have appeared, and impressive financial resources have been allocated for environmental protection. However, no practical results have been achieved: the world's population continues to grow, and the process of global warming is becoming irreversible. This raises the question of the expediency and effectiveness of international organizations and committees to combat anthropological impact on the environment.
Building the environmental agenda and leading organizations
With the end of the Second World War, a major shift in the perception of the environmental agenda occurred in 1972 with the Club of Rome's Limits to Growth report, which raised the issue of limited natural resources on planet Earth. It was this event that prompted the world community to seriously address environmental issues. Thus, in 1972, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) was established, which remains to this day the main UN body in the field of ecology. Through it, states and international organizations cooperate to solve global, regional and national problems in the field of environmental protection and sustainable development. UNEP's activities are guided by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), adopted in 1992, which regulates the global environmental agenda and establishes the principles and framework for international cooperation on climate change. Its main goal is to prevent dangerous anthropogenic impacts on the Earth's climate system.
The U.S. National Security Strategy 2022 calls climate change "a critical and perhaps existential challenge for all nations." The French National Strategic Review 2022 notes that global warming will pose threats to food security, limit access to water resources, and increase migratory flows and pandemics.
A number of instruments were later adopted to complement the Convention, such as: The Kyoto Protocol in 1997, which committed industrialized countries and states with economies in transition to meet quantified emission reduction targets for six greenhouse gases, and the Paris Agreement in 2015, which requires all participating countries to plan and regularly report on the nationally determined contributions they undertake to achieve a declared common goal and mitigate climate change.
Among the most successful activities of UNEP is the recovery of the Earth's ozone layer. Approximately 99% of ozone-depleting substances have been eliminated in stages, which has recently led to the restoration of the planet's protective layer. According to UNEP data, over the past three decades it has been possible to save almost 50 species of birds and mammals that were on the verge of extinction. Specialists also note that almost a third of all farms on the planet - about 163 million - already use sustainable farming methods, thanks to which the rate of deforestation has been reduced by 33%.
When countries signed the Convention, they agreed to meet annually to discuss global warming and greenhouse gases. Since then, 28 events have been held, but the 27th Conference of the Parties to the Convention was truly groundbreaking, when it was revealed that the current rate of CO2 emissions growth is likely to lead to catastrophic warming of 2.5°C, and that a 45% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions to hold the global average temperature rise to 1.5°C is virtually unattainable under current conditions. Such statements effectively reversed all the previous work of the Parties to the Convention and recognized the measures taken by states to combat global warming as ineffective.
Another important outcome of the 27th Conference was the establishment of the Compensation Fund for the Poorest Developing Countries for Irreversible Climate Change, the agreement for which was signed at the 28th Conference in November 2023. The establishment of this Fund implied a completely new approach to addressing environmental issues. Its exclusiveness lies in the targeting and accountability of assistance to the most affected states. However, some experts note the possibility of politicization of the new body due to the fact that it will be established under the auspices of the World Bank. It is already known that the Board of Trustees of the Fund will include representatives of the World Bank. At the same time, the Bank has expressed its intention to use its own funds to issue "low-interest loans" to rebuild the infrastructure of the most affected countries. This method of establishing influence on countries has long been known and practiced both by the Bank itself and other organizations controlled by the U.S. and its allies on the model of "money in exchange for loyalty". Thus, the appearance of loan conditions in the draft guiding documents of the Fund seriously displeased representatives of some delegations, as it was initially assumed that the assistance would be provided to the affected states on a free-of-charge basis.
However, the compensation mechanism is still in the formative stage. It is planned that it will be finally approved at the next Conference at the end of 2024. However, the position of the Fund's management can already be observed now, as almost 90% of the $600 million contributions collected for its establishment falls on the countries of the European Union.
In addition to UN-based initiatives, the number of non-governmental organizations for environmental protection is increasing: Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund and the International Green Cross, the creation of which was announced by Mikhail Gorbachev at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992. At present, experts count about 12 thousand "green" non-governmental organizations.
The All-Russian Society for Nature Protection, founded by employees of the Nature Protection Department of the People's Commissariat of Education of the RSFSR in 1924, is one of the first national environmental organizations in the world.
Efforts to combat environmental challenges have also been undertaken within the framework of regional and economic international organizations. For example, as early as 1977, ASEAN member countries began to implement joint initiatives in the field of environmental cooperation. Eleven years later, the ASEAN Regional Center for Biodiversity Conservation was established, and at the next summit of the association in September 2023, a number of new strategic documents in the field of sustainable development were adopted.
Within the framework of another international organization - the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) - in 1992, the Intergovernmental Agreement of the CIS Member States on Cooperation in the Field of Ecology and Environmental Protection was signed, which became the legal basis for further cooperation in the field of ecology. To date, the Interparliamentary Assembly of the CIS has adopted 79 documents on relevant topics.
It is important to note that similar formats of cooperation between countries to combat environmental problems operate not only within regional organizations, but also within economic associations. Thus, in 2021, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov announced the start of the negotiation process to develop five-party climate commitments within the BRICS framework. In April 2024, during a meeting of the BRICS Contact Group, the Russian side proposed to establish a new specialized platform to discuss climate change issues on the basis of an intergovernmental organization. The member countries supported this idea, so the first BRICS Climate Forum is planned to be held in August 2024.
Politicization of the green agenda
From the very beginning of its existence, the environmental agenda has been closely linked to the political agenda. For example, the "Earth Day" action, held annually around the world on April 22, was first used by the U.S. authorities in 1970 to shift to an anti-war agenda in the run-up to the 1972 presidential election. On that day, lectures held at American universities raised issues of women's rights, racial equality and social justice in addition to environmental and anti-war themes.
Today, this political tool is still used by governments to establish influence or lobby for their interests. For example, France has recently been actively promoting the protection of the Lake Chad ecosystem. However, the reason for this policy is not the desire to preserve the water body, but Paris' strategic interests in Central Africa. Consequently, by participating in the creation of an environmental agenda, France retains the opportunity to influence the situation in the region. Located between Libya, Niger, Central African Republic, Sudan, Nigeria, Sudan and Cameroon, Chad is a strategic outpost for France and the U.S. to fight Islamist militants in the Sahel and Boko Haram in Nigeria, as well as to monitor political instability in the region.
The "green" agenda is also often used to exert targeted pressure on states whose policies contradict the national interests of other countries. For example, the situation with the fishing of krill by Russia and China in the Antarctic, which is actively covered in the Western press as a serious threat to the ecology of the South Pole. However, the reasons for the creation of such an information agenda, according to many experts, are the lack of their own fishing capacities and the strategic interests of Western states in the region.
Another example is the contradictory behavior of Western countries against the background of the ongoing special military operation in Ukraine. For example, environmental standards in the engineering industry introduced by the European Commission have long restricted the access of non-European brands to the Western market. At the same time, Germany's recent announcement about switching to coal heating in connection with the refusal from Russian gas once again emphasized the dual nature of European environmental policy.
IIn addition, studies by Western analysts speak of positive changes in the environment due to the sanctions imposed on Russia after the start of the special military operation. According to experts, the decrease in Russia's GDP and its share in world trade has led to a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. But at the same time, the West is actively developing the idea that Russia's special military operation in Ukraine is causing irreparable damage to its environment and leading to the extinction of "red-listed" animals living in the NWO zone. There is also an opinion in the expert community that Russia's actions should be qualified as ecocide, for which Moscow should be brought to international legal responsibility. These examples clearly demonstrate how the environmental agenda can be used by states in different ways to promote their interests.
However, not only countries, but also leading international "green" organizations are putting pressure on states through an environmental agenda. For example, in August 2012, Greenpeace activists, opposing oil production in Africa, attacked a Gazprom drilling platform as well as the Russian seismic exploration vessel Geologist Dmitry Nalivkin. This event caused a worldwide reaction, as a result of which Gazprom's drilling platform was suspended for a year.
Thus, despite the presence of some positive results of the world community's activities in the fight against environmental problems, recently the environmental agenda has been more and more often becoming a tool to exert pressure on unfriendly countries. Unfortunately, in the current geopolitical realities it is not possible to achieve the elimination of politicization of the "green" agenda. However, there is already a tendency for states to search for new ways of cooperation to combat environmental problems both within the existing system and by creating other forms of cooperation to achieve a common goal.
