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

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Conclusion
Since the 1960s a number of regimes have been created in response to environmental
concerns, particularly those that have emerged in industrialized
countries. These regimes are evidence of an increasing internationalization,
even a globalization, of environmental policy and regulation. At present
it seems highly unlikely that a world government with policy force
and judicial power will develop in the foreseeable future, and future environmental
regimes will probably come about in ways that are not significantly
different from the ways in which regimes were created in the past. 1
It also seems a safe proposition that countries will continue to use regimes
to attempt to solve transboundary and global environmental problems.
Although some would like them to be more powerful instruments of environmental
protection, regimes do under some circumstances stimulate the
development of international and global environmental policy by creating
joint gains and, at the same time, constraining governments’ freedom in
the environmental field.
In chapter 1 I pointed out that norms and principles establishing the
deep normative structure of regimes are considered important in regime
analysis. But relatively little has been established about the processes
through which regime norms and principles are developed, especially their
intellectual and substantive content. The same is true with regard to the
relationships between widely accepted ideas and global environmental
regime norms and principles. Public ideas and actors and channels expressing
as well as molding public ideas should play a more prominent role in
environmental regime analysis. At the very least, this study cautions one
to be skeptical about environmental regime studies emphasizing power,
narrow egoistic self-interest, and scientific knowledge at the expense of
everything else.