Abstract
Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution (LRTAP) treaty regime is one of environmental regimes which have relatively long histories such as the Mediterranean regime and the Washington Convention regime.
The regime, which started with the establishment of atmosphere monitoring program in 1977, finally formed a treaty in 1979.
After that, 8 protocols were formulated during the period from 1984 to 1999.
Uniform reduction targets were set at the beginning, and formulation of later protocols, more reflecting latest scientific knowledge such as use of scientific computer tools, was institutionalized.
The regime is widely understood as the model of successful global environment management based on regime treaty and protocol methods since the acid rain damage in European areas has been actually improved significantly in recent decades.
Looking back on such a brilliant history of LRTAP treaty regime from the present day, the regime seems to have been formed and developed very smoothly.
One reason which can be considered is that environmental management on a local level has progressed not only in the field of long-range transboundary air pollution but also in the other fields in Europe.
It's generally believed that such an environmental management on a regional level was able to be carried out because it was Europe which consists of developed countries and the sense of local unity based on the European thought was strong.
However, in the 1970s when the regime was being formed, European Economic Community (EEC, later European Union) member countries were only 6.
Most of them were net-exporters of acid rain, so unwilling to form the LRTAP treaty regime.
Northern Europe countries which were net-importers repeatedly asked for the promotion of global cooperative management of acid rain by activities like summoning United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, but no international organization led it.
How was the LRTAP treaty regime formed and developed under the rather adverse institutional conditions? The purpose of this paper is to reconstruct the formulation trajectories of the LRTAP treaty regime from the viewpoint of dynamic interaction between power, interests, ideas, actors and institutions.
The analysis result revealed that United Nations, the Soviet union, and Eastern European countries joined as new actors in the 1970s and they accepted principles of Nordic countries and their interests also coincided, which gave great momentum to the formulation of regime treaty.
