Regimförhandlingar på miljöområdet: en studie av förhandlingarna om LRTAP-konventionen

In the last decades the growth in environmental pollution has led to a comparable growth in the number of the so-called regimes that attempt to combat transboundary pollution at the regional and global level. The majority of these international regimes have been contractual and have taken the form of frame-conventions. To varying degree there have been more detailed procedural mechanisms attached to these frame-conventions in the form of additional protocols. The regime creating frame conventions have in common the fact that they are negotiated forth between a large number of parties within the framework of, or the supervision of, an international cooperative organization. Negotiations have, in addition to the fact of the large number of participants, been made more difficult by the large number of issues and issue-linkages to other political arenas and the lack of information as to the possible spread of effects and the extent of damage in the case of transboundary pollution control. This case study, on the negotiations of the LRTAP convention (Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution) and the European air quality control regime, reveals how parties to the regime negotiations on transboundary pollution come to an agreement on an acceptable contractual regime. The focus of the study is on how the parties handle the complexity of the negotiations and the issues of information uncertainty. The central finding of the study is how the parties arrive at an agreement on a contractual regime through a leadership-driven incremental process of trial and error. Through this trial and error process the parties are able to handle the complexity of negotiations and information uncertainty by creating instruments which simplify and steer the process. Examples of these instruments are, negotiation rolls, participant hierarchies, the prioritization of problems, a common document text.