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Phoebe Stephens | Equity Norms in Global Environmental Governance
the biodiverse countries of the South recognized the monetary value of their
resources and feared that adhering to CHM principles for forests would
allow developed countries to ‘bioprospect’ and ‘biopirate’ at their own free
will (Raustiala and Victor 289). Should this have occurred, the South would
have been further subordinated to the North with rich countries unjustly
profiting from their national resources. Thus, they argued that CHM was
only applicable to the principle of global commons so as to retain sovereignty
over their territory. The following quote aptly reflects the arguments made by
the developing countries during the UNCED forest negotiations, “Forests
are not naturally globalized, no matter how much you want to talk about
them in the global context. Forests are tangible, local, you know where they
are, often who they belong to; they don’t move around except in
international trade.” (qtd. in Davenport, 107)
Ultimately, the CHM had lost its allure even amongst its original
proponents, as developing countries feared the loss of their sovereignty over
natural resources. To reiterate, evidence of the normative shift was offered
through the rejection of Malta’s 1988 CHM proposition by the UN General
Assembly and then replaced with a language of common concern. This
position became further entrenched during the Earth Summit as developing
countries joined in, questioning the validity of the CHM. Consequently, the
Rio documents are rife with references to the “common concern of
mankind”, which makes the CHM too controversial to ever really succeed.
(Bernstein 472)
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