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

186 Chapter 10
able to significantly influence international policy and interstate negotiations.
17 To what extent policy entrepreneurs tend to target some types of
problems rather than others, and to what extent their strategies for influence
vary according across problem types, should also be examined. This
study suggests that policy entrepreneurs select problems to which it is possible
to attract sufficient political and public attention, craft politically
acceptable solutions, and broaden support. It would also be necessary to
identify with more care the specific political resources controlled by individuals
exerting influential leadership.
Chapter 9 suggested four primary roles for ENGOs in international environmental
regimes. Comparative empirical research would be most useful
to examine and further improve these hypotheses about ENGOs’ sources
of influence. Moreover, examining the role of ENGOs with respect to
regimes would broaden the narrow focus on state and policy elites prevalent
in mainstream literature on regimes.
Moreover, the 1993 global radwaste ban raises many broader questions:
How autonomous are states when they formulate their environmental policy?
How does the ability to accommodate organized environmental interests
vary among states? To what extent can states pursue their interests in
the face of political pressure, international public opinion, and a regime?
These issues should be examined further. How epistemic communities
might increase their influence on international policy development with
respect to ENGOs should also be investigated. Similarly, it is relevant to
examine how ENGOs use their technical competence in order to reach
political objectives, and how they weigh their technical knowledge against
their political beliefs. For instance, with respect to ocean dumping of waste,
Greenpeace distrusted the scientific advice of marine scientists because the
organization thought that it was in the scientists’ professional interest to
support ocean dumping (Stairs and Taylor 1992, pp. 122–127).
Finally, as discussed in detail, from the point of view of marine scientists
and marine scientific expert groups, the global radwaste disposal ban is evidence
of a negative regime development. Students of international politics
acknowledge that regimes might have negative effects, but more attention
should be paid to this important issue. 18 It is also relevant to ask whether
ENGO influence should always be regarded as positive from an environmental
protection and societal point of view. 19