Radioactive Waste Disposal at Sea: Public Ideas ... - IMO

Explaining Regime Formation 123
blowout in 1969, 22 and the Baltic Sea was said to be on the verge of a disaster.
23 The idea’s broad applicability made it highly influential.
Second, the image of the ocean is a powerful symbol of our common heritage
(as presumably all species came from the oceans), tranquility, and
global interdependence, and thus it is very much antithetical to a world of
nation-states jealously guarding their sovereignty. 24
Third, the oceans’ traditional legal status as common property, with its
connotations of international, global interests as opposed to the chauvinistic,
national interests of states, probably added to the power of this idea.
Fourth, the “dying oceans” idea did not exist in an ideological vacuum.
It echoed two of the major themes of the environmental movement in the
late 1960s and the early 1970s. One major theme of the environmental
movement was the feeling of crisis (Weart 1988, p. 324). There were, in a
sense, two crises, because the crisis of the ocean would imperil the welfare
of individuals and the health of society. A second major theme of the environmental
movement was “a concern with whole systems, with the ways
in which pollution could affect ecological relationships around the globe,
and with the ways in which our entire modern culture and economic system
encouraged pollution” (ibid., p. 325). On a first impression today,
ocean pollution would probably appear to be a problem with obvious
international and even global dimensions. However, not until the late
1960s did ocean pollution come to be looked upon as an international
environmental problem.
By advocating and spreading the “dying oceans” idea, policy entrepreneurs
increased the legitimacy and the credibility of environmentalists and
pro-environment mass media attacking the prevalent idea of the pristine
and indestructible ocean. Policy entrepreneurs staged national hearings
and international conferences, and environmentalists’ vivid descriptions
of how pollution was not only endangering life in the oceans but the
entire global ecosystem got prominent coverage in the media. Experts,
scientists, and professionals who took a moderate pro-dumping stance
were not given equal access to important and prestigious political forums
and platforms.
It also conforms well to prior research that policy entrepreneurs deliberately
pushed a simplistic understanding of the problem of ocean dumping
in order to mobilize political and public support. Evidently, the idea
that “the oceans are dying” was not true in an absolute sense, but this did