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

72 Chapter 4
administration suggested that international regulation be established.
Although some epistemic-community theorists doubt that leadership by
prominent states is necessary for regimes to form, the hegemon, the United
States, thus took the initiative to establish the global ocean dumping regime.
Nor were politicians influenced by scientific knowledge, as epistemiccommunity
theorists suggest. Congressional hearings demonstrated that
scientists radically disagreed as to whether ocean dumping had damaged
the ocean environment and whether the ocean had the capacity to safely
absorb some substances. Scientists also disagreed as to whether knowledge
about the effects of ocean dumping was sufficient to guide regulation. In
short, technical and policy experts were divided. Stringent ocean dumping
legislation was, therefore, not given unanimous support by marine scientists.
Politicians, however, largely ignored this.
Beginning in the late 1960s, international organizations, scientists, and
international “anti-pollution” conferences advocated control of ocean
dumping. Ecologists and environmentalists participated in conferences (for
example, the Biosphere Conference) organized by international organizations;
ecologists and environmentalists also participated in international
“anti-pollution” conferences; and the FAO convened several hundred scientists
to establish a global scientific approach to marine pollution.
Specialized UN agencies began collecting information on national dumping
regulations and on the amounts and the kinds of wastes being dumped. But
the public and the governments paid little attention to such initiatives.
In chapter 5 I will show that politicians together with prominent environmentalists
and ecologists—instead of scientists and international organizations—spearheaded
the U.S. initiative to construct a global ocean
dumping regime. Perhaps epistemic-community theorists would object to
this conclusion. They would correctly point out that the global ocean dumping
regime of 1972 was constructed at a time when few governments had
established environmental protection agencies. An epistemic community
would, therefore, lack the organizational platform necessary to exert its
influence. Nonetheless, this case demonstrates that the existence of an epistemic
community is not a necessary condition for environmental regime formation.
Chapters 5 and 6 will add supporting evidence to this conclusion.