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

Notes to pp. 158–164 227
7. According to Keohane’s formal definition (1984, pp. 51–52), “intergovernmental
cooperation takes place when the policies actually followed by one government
are regarded by its partners as facilitating realization of their own objectives, as the
result of a process of policy coordination.” For a discussion of this definition, see
Milner 1992, pp. 467–470.
8. As I mentioned in chapter 3, realist and neoliberal studies of power used to
achieve a common good focus on malign and benign hegemons. For a brief discussion
of power in the service of the common good, see Krasner 1983, pp. 13–14.
9. Keohane (1984, p. 53) disagrees with this.
10. I put “radiation-free” in quotation marks, since several radionuclides (e.g.
potassium-40 and uranium) exist naturally in the oceans.
11. See P. Haas 1989, 1992b. But note the conclusion of an epistemic-communityoriented
case study in international regulation of commercial whaling (Peterson
1992, p. 182): “Yet the epistemic community of conservation-minded cetologists
only briefly enjoyed predominant influence over policy. Most of the time, the influence
of cetologists was outweighed by that of other groups, the industry managers
until the mid-1960s and the environmentalists after the mid-1970s.”
12. GESAMP (1992) stressed the need for a holistic and multi-sectoral framework
(i.e., land, air, and water) for the management of radioactive wastes, that wastes were
unavoidably produced despite clean technologies and recycling, and that radwaste
disposal had not presented “appreciable risks” to humans or the environment.
13. On marine scientists’ discussion of the concept of assimilative capacity, see
Stebbing 1992.
14. A long and heated debate on the concept(s) of the precautionary principle took
place in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin after John Gray, a leading member of
GESAMP wrote that “the precautionary principle is entirely an administrative and
legislative matter and has nothing to do with science” (Gray 1990, p. 174). See letters
in Marine Pollution Bulletin 21 (December 1990) by Paul Johnston and Mark
Simmonds (p. 402), Alf B. Josefson (p. 598), John Lawrence and D. Taylor (pp.
598–599), and John S. Gray (pp. 599–600); see also Earll 1992; Peterman and
M’Gonigle 1992. Other scientists have also criticized the precautionary principle;
see, e.g., Milne 1993, pp. 34–37. More generally, see O’Riordan and Cameron
1994.
15. M. D. Hill, Head of Assessments Department, U.K. National Radiological
Protection Board, quoted in House of Lords, Select Committee on the European
Communities, 19th Report: Radioactive Waste Management. Session 1987-88.
Minutes of Evidence (1988), p. 34.
16. On the historic development of public concern about the marine environment,
see Waldichuk 1982, pp. 37–75.
17. For an overview and a discussion of this literature, see Breitmeier and Rittberger
2000.
18. But Princen and his colleagues have also stated, in the case of the Antarctic,
that “to promote regime change . . . the environmental NGOs supplanted the scientific
NGOs” (Princen et al. 1995, p. 48).