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

Explaining Regime Change 155
engaged in a high-profile confrontation with the coal miners’ trade union
and did not want to take on the issue of radwaste disposal issue; Spain’s
Prime Minister, Felipe Gonzalez, was eager to improve relations with the
separatist Basques, who were opposing dumping intensely, and had committed
himself to a fierce anti-dumping stance in the London Convention
context; and in the United States the Clinton administration’s strong support
for environmental measures was tipping the balance in favor of the
Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration at the expense of the Department of Defense and
the Department of Energy. A complete explanation of the regime change
must take into account such domestic and special circumstances in addition
to primarily international and global elements.
The changes brought about by Greenpeace set the stage for the sequence
of events in which the main actor was the anti-dumping governmental coalition.
In contrast to the pre-1972 period, when no regime existed, the dumping
regime was an important institutional instrument for the anti-dumping
governmental coalition.
The regime change and the decision to ban radwaste disposal were mediated
by the global ocean dumping regime in essentially three ways.
First, the regime served as an institutional focal point for governmental
and nongovernmental opposition to radwaste disposal. It increased the
international visibility of contested government policy. The existence of a
permanent global forum in which the issue could be debated from an environmental
perspective was clearly advantageous for those who were
opposed to radwaste disposal. ENGOs and governments were skillful in
using this international institution to protest against radwaste disposal and
to present scientific and technical reports in support of halting ocean dumping
of radioactive waste. Thus, very much in line with the thinking of UN
experts involved in the regime-building process, this environmental regime
served as a global forum before which private citizen groups as well as governments
could bring their protests concerning dumping practices which
were perceived as hazardous and as creating transboundary risks. 3
Second, within the framework of the regime, the coalition of anti-dumping
governments adopted resolutions and later treaty amendments aimed at
halting such disposal. As a result of a series of London Convention resolutions
that gradually altered the legal substance of the dumping regime in a
more pro-environment and precautionary direction, radwaste disposal