The first Earth Day was a hit that the whole world heard about

The first Earth Day protests on April 22, 1970, brought 20 million Americans to the streets – 10% of the US population at the time. Recognizing the power of this growing movement, President Richard Nixon and Congress responded by creating Environmental Protection Agency and passing a wave of bills, including Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act.

But Earth Day’s impact reached far beyond the United States. A gaggle of specialists from the US Department of State understood that environmental problems don’t stop at national borders, and created mechanisms to jointly solve them with other countries.

For scholars like me who study global managementthe major challenge is to get nations to act together. In my opinion, without the first Earth Day, global motion against issues like trade in endangered species, stratospheric ozone depletion and climate change would take for much longer – or may not be taken in any respect.

Alarms around the world

In 1970, governments around the world were grappling with the challenges of transboundary pollution. For example, sulfur and nitrogen oxides emitted from coal-fired power plants in the UK traveled a whole bunch of miles on north winds before returning to the ground in northern Europe as acid rain, fog and snow. This process killed lakes and forests in Germany and Sweden.

Realizing that solutions would only work through a collective effort, the countries convened a conference first world conference on the environment in Stockholm on June 5–16, 1972. Representatives of 113 governments attended and adopted the Stockholm Declaration on the Human Environment, which states that people have a fundamental right to the environment which allows a lifetime of dignity and prosperity. They also adopted a resolution to ascertain a recent international institution coping with environmental protection.

Contrary to today’s position, the United States was a strong supporter of the conference. The US delegation presented a series of actionsincluding a moratorium on business whaling, a convention to manage ocean sinking, and the creation of the World Heritage Trust to guard wildlife and scenic natural sites.

At the conclusion of the conference, President Nixon issued a statement noting that “for the first time in history, the nations of the world have sat down together to better understand each other’s environmental problems and explore opportunities positive motion, individually and collectively“

Other nations were far more skeptical. For example, France and Britain were concerned about potential regulations that could hamper the British-French fleet Concorde supersonic jet aircraftwhich began operating only in 1969.

Developing countries were also suspicious, seeing environmental initiatives as a part of an agenda recommend by wealthy countries to forestall them from industrializing. “I don’t think we’re prepared for this become the new Robinson Crusoes” – said Brazilian delegate Bernardo de Azevedo Brito in response to calls from industrialized countries to scale back pollution.

UN Environment Agency

Thanks largely to U.S. leadership, industrialized nations agreed to create and supply initial funding for arguably the world’s most vital global environmental institution: the United Nations Environmental Program. UNEP was a catalyst for the negotiations on the 1985 Vienna Convention and its sequel, the 1987 Convention. Montreal Protocol, a treaty to limit the production and use of gear that deplete the Earth’s protective ozone layer. Today, the agency continues to guide international efforts on issues equivalent to pollution control, biodiversity conservation and climate change.

John W. McDonaldwho was director of economic and social affairs in the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of International Organizations, spread the idea recent UN environmental agencyand received the support of the Nixon administration. However, the creation of a recent international institution for environmental protection could only be achieved with the financial support of industrialized countries.

In a speech to Congress on February 8, 1972, Nixon proposed creation of a $100 million environmental protection fund – nearly $600 million in today’s dollars – to support effective international cooperation on environmental issues and create a central coordinating point for UN activities. Recognizing that the United States was the world’s largest polluter, the Nixon administration provided 30% of that amount in the first five years.

For the next twenty years, the United States was the largest single contributor to the fund that supports UNEP’s work around the world. In the early Nineties, it provided $21 million a 12 months, comparable to about $38 million in today’s dollars.

However, as I discuss in my upcoming book on UNEP, after Republicans took control of each houses of Congress in 1994, the U.S. contribution dropped to $5.5 million in 1997. Since then, it has remained at roughly $6 million per 12 months, down 84%. . Today US contribution is 30% smaller than e.g Netherlandswhose economy is 20 times smaller.

Commitment to leadership

In my opinion, unfortunately, the United States has abandoned its long-standing leadership role on global environmental issues. President Trump has pursued a foreign policy he calls “America First,” which incorporates withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement suspension of funding for the World Health Organization.

International problems require global cooperation and leadership by example. Developing countries are more reticent to have interaction in multilateral agreements if the wealthy and powerful withdraw from or oppose these rules.

As a political scientist and UN expert Edward Luck wrote, the United States has vacillated for many years in between accepting and rejecting international organizations. Luck notes that when U.S. support wanes, the UN finds itself “in limbo, neither strengthened nor abandoned,” and the global community is less in a position to address fundamental problems.

The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed the inability of countries to act encourage, organize and finance a coordinated global response. No other government has yet been in a position to fill the void left by the United States.

I consider the fiftieth anniversary of Earth Day is an appropriate time to rethink America’s commitment to global governance. As President Nixon said in his 1972 speech of support for UNEP:

“In recent years, we’ve got been dramatically enlightened by (…) this recent recognition that, to a large extent, man also determines the fate of the planet on which he lives and the fate of all life on it. We have even begun to see that these destinies are usually not many and never separate in any respect – that is a fact they’re indivisibly one“

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