象牙取引規制レジーム: 知識・言説・利益

抄録

The epistemic community approach is prevalent in the analysis of global environmental issues. However, Litfin criticizes the approach and argues that it neglects the fact that politics incluences science just as science influences politics. As an alternative, she presents what she calls a discursive approach. Discourses are formed through interpretation of scientific knowledge and give, in turn, a concrete meaning to scientific knowldge. The discourses defined in this way, she argues, specify the policy domain, i. e., the domain of policy options. According to this approach, the dominant discourse plays an important role in regime formation.
But, Litfin's discursive approach contains many problems and defects. Firstly, even though she insists that discourses delimit the policy domain in her case study of the ozone layer protection regime, she does not clarify the extent to which the discourses delimit the policy domain. Secondly, she failed to demonstrate how much influence the discourses have on actor's preferences and thus behavior. The purpose of this paper is to examine these issues which she left out from the discursive approach.
First of all, I divide a process of global environmental regime formation into four stages: the knowledge formation stage; the discourse formation stage; the negotiation stage; and the decision-making stage. Then, I will demonstrate that factors such as scientific knowledge, discourses, interests and power have different influences depending on individual stages. As a case study, I choose the ivory trade regulation regime in Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). African Elephant had been listed in Appendix II and mangaed under the ivory export quota sytem (ITQS). But, because the elephant population continued to decline, they decided to list African Elephant to Appendix I (i. e., the ivory trade was banned) at the 7th COP (Conference of Parties) in 1989.
The results of the analysis are the following. As far as the scientific knowledge is concerned (i. e., during the knowledge formation stage), there was no significant change in the population of the African Elephant between 1987 band 1989. Despite of the unchanged data (scientific knowledge), the recommendations of the expert groups of African Elephant had changed over time between 1987 and 1989. They recommended to just to tighten the ITQS in 1987. But, in June 1989, they recommonded totally to ban the ivory trade. Finally, they made recommendation to ban the ivory trade except for three Southern African countries at the 7th COP in October 1989. Scientific knowldge it self cannot explain such changes. As Litfin pointed out, the decision-makers accepts the scientific knowledge through discourses. And, the dominant discourse which is formed at the stage of discourse formation plays the role of delimiting the policy domain. In our case, the dominant discourse had shifted from the total ivory trade ban to the partial trade ban before the 7th COP, excluding the tightening of the ITQS.
At the negotiation stage, three compromise proposals were presented. But, the copromise proposal based on the dominant discourse was rejected by Zimbabwe who demanded to exclude the eight Southern African countries from the ban for the sake of the regional solidarity. Finally, at the collective decision making stage, those countries which had strong preferences on the ivory trade issue casted their votes mainly on the basis of their primary (e. g., economic) interests. And, those primary interests were constituted irrespective of the discourses. As the result, the total ivory trade ban, which was far from the dominant discourse, was decided upon. The influence of deiscourses decreased dramatically when they entered into the negotiation and decision-making stages.
Discourse has much explanatory power to delimit the policy domain. However, at the negotiation and decision-making stages, it failed to