CHAPTER 1:

THE PRINCIPLES OF
ENVIRONMENTAL
POLITICS
(PART 2)
Resource Person: Mohd Idham Mohd Yusof
 An Overview
i. Human-Nature philosophies
ii. Islam and the ecology
iii. Cooperation and Efficiency
iv. Sufficiency

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COOPERATION &
EFFICIENCY
 Cooperation in Environmental
Politics
▪ Most pressing international environmental issues currently requiring international
cooperation, the primary benefits of cooperation will appear decades or, more
likely, centuries.
(Read DeSombre, nd)
▪ We are facing numerous global issues which negatively affected our environment:
✓ Global timber harvesters are squeezing more and more fiber out of a
hectare of forest, yet deforestation proceeds unabated.
✓ The automobile and petrochemical industries are creating more wealth for
a unit of pollution, yet emissions continue to grow (Princen., p. 33).
✓ Deforestration
✓ Greenhouse build-up
✓ Water scarcity
▪ Due to the above (and more environmental issues) practitioners and scholars
alike call for more cooperation and more efficiency
 How political cooperation could
lead to environmental efficiency?
Actors in International Environmental
Politics and Governance
▪ Addressing environmental issues at
various levels of government requires
cooperation from many actors.
▪ In international environmental politics
and governance, O’Neill (2012) has
highlighted that the following actors
should be involved, which will nurture
cooperation towards environmental
solutions (see next slide).
Actor in Environmental Politics and
Governance
State Actors
International Governmental
Organisations (IGO)
International Non-
Governmental Organisations
(INGO)
Multinational Corporations
(MNC)
Civil Society
i) State Actors
▪ All countries and their governments are responsible for
protecting the environment.
▪ Their roles are more significant if they sign the United
Nations/regional treaties/agreement on environmental
protection. By doing so, they were hoping to translate the
environmental commitment into their political structure and
institution
▪ Nation states
▪ Bilateral and multilateral cooperation
 Point to ponder: Who should be having more obligation
towards environmental policy and governance?
Developed, developing or underdeveloped nations?
▪ An important trend in international environmental cooperation is the changing
role of developing states. Initially, these states were more or less ignored in the
process of international policymaking. But it became clear that on some issues
their participation, whether or not they had contributed to the creation of the
problem or were particularly impacted by it, was essential to environmental
protection internationally. At the same time, because their future behaviours
would have such an important impact on global environmental conditions, they
gained bargaining power on some international environmental issues greater than
they generally have in world politics.
▪ This dynamic has led to international mechanisms by which industrialized states
compensate developing states for their environmental activities in a way that
helps protect the environmental resources in question.
▪ The influence of developing countries in international environmental cooperation
has limits, often influenced by the structure of the issues addressed. Developing
countries have traditionally had a high degree of influence when their
participation was needed to address global environmental issues of particular
concern to the industrialized states.
(Read DeSombre, nd)
Image: [Link]
ii) International Governmental
Organisations
▪ The roles of the United Nations, their agencies and the regional
cooperation in addressing the environmental issues through multi-level
cooperation mechanisms. Example: UN agencies that membered Issue-
based Coalition on Environment and Climate Change
([Link]
ii) International Governmental
Organisations
▪ UN and their agencies
▪ ASEAN and EU – Regional cooperation
▪ International Financial Institutions (World Bank and
ADB)
 iii) The International NGO
(INGO)
▪ The International
NGO (INGO) or
Environmental
NGO (ENGO)
that fighting for
specific
environmental
issues.
▪ WWF
▪ GREENPEACE

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call-for-a-fossil-free-EU-bank
iv) Civil Society
▪ The roles of scientists, academicians, research institutes and
experts in providing data, information and environmental
trends that alarm the political actors.
▪ These data will support the policy and decision making
process
▪ Individual role
a) Expert Group: Case Study
▪ Ozone depletion is one of the environmental problems
▪ Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), along with other chlorine- and
bromine-containing compounds, have been implicated in the
accelerated depletion of ozone in the Earth's stratosphere.
CFCs were developed in the early 1930s and are used in a
variety of industrial, commercial, and household applications
([Link]
▪ Research in the 1970s gave reason to suspect that CFCs
could, in the presence of sunlight, destroy ozone molecules.
Other research indicated that CFCs were sufficiently stable
that they could perhaps travel as far as the ozone layer. This
led to international cooperative efforts to conduct scientific
research into whether these substances were travelling that
far, and what their effect would be (DeSombre, nd)
Image: [Link]
efforts-gain-excellent-payback-1dn9Z0WGlDG/[Link]
Image: [Link]
b) Specific Individual
▪ We all have roles to play to protect the environment.
b) Specific Individual
Source:
[Link]
5719493/1361389351012545/?type=3&locale=ms_MY
 c) The broader public
▪ The role of the community and public to protect the environment
at various levels

Read:
[Link]
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launched-against-climate-
change/[Link]
Source:
[Link]
[Link]/
features/2021
/3/18/from-
trash-to-
treasure-how-
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recycle-
waste-into-
wealth
v) Multinational Corporations
(MNC)
▪ Business
communities,
national and
international
corporations
▪ They are
required to
protect the
environment
through their
company’s Source: [Link]
policies, CSR
activities etc.
As simple as…
 TUTORIAL 5
Choose one actor in
international environmental
politics and governance. With
accurate examples, analyse their
roles in environmental
protection initiatives.
 Process of Political-Environmental Cooperation
Cooperation is a prevalent
focus which involves the
process of:

Reaching
Negotiating
agreement

Implementing Monitoring

Resolving Building
disputes confidence
 i) Negotiating on Global
Environmental Concerns
▪ Negotiation,
discussion and
reaching to
consensus on
specific
environmental
issues.

Source:
[Link]
e/2022/11/07/climate/cop27-
climate-summit
i) Negotiation: Case Study
▪ When international negotiations to address the potential
problem of ozone depletion began, there was only limited
evidence of any human impact on the ozone layer; the
Antarctic ozone ‘hole’ (in reality a systematic thinning of the
ozone layer over Antarctica) was only discovered as the
Vienna Convention was being negotiated in 1985, and its
human-induced causes remained unclear until after the
agreement was completed.
(Read DeSombre, nd)
ii) Reaching into
Environmental Agreements
▪ International environmental agreements, unlike some other
areas of public international law, bind states, but for
compliance require behaviour change primarily by private
substate actors.
▪ i.e Nation stated signing into Kyoto Protocol and Paris
Agreement
▪ Other changes in the nature of the environmental problems
being regulated have led to an increasing degree of influence
on the part of developing countries in international
environmental agreements. Despite this increased
complexity, multilateral environmental agreements have
continued to be a powerful tool for mitigating difficult
environmental problems.
(DeSombre, nd)
Image: [Link]
 iii) Implementing Environmental
Policy/Agreement
▪ Implementing the environmental policy/ agreement required
cooperation from multilevel governance at global, regional and
country levels.

Image:
[Link]
%2Dclimate%2Dleadership%2Dhandicapped%
2Dby%2Dinadequate%2Ddomestic%2Dpolicy
iii) Implementing: Case Study
▪ Developing states, led by China and India, did not initially
ratify the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete
the Ozone Layer, arguing that it would preclude development
options that to them were of a higher priority than protection
of the ozone layer.
▪ Their credible threat to stay outside of the agreement and
develop while using substances prohibited within it resulted
in the creation of the Montreal Protocol Multilateral Fund.
▪ Under this agreement, developed states give money to meet
the full ‘incremental costs of developing countries in
complying with the agreement; after its creation, all the major
developing countries joined the Montreal Protocol
(Read DeSombre, nd)
Image: [Link]
environmentally-friendly-countries/
iv) Monitoring the
Environmental Agreements
▪ Monitoring the environmental agreements is crucial.
▪ These monitoring provisions (which are inserted in the
environmental agreements i.e in resource management
aggreements) have become stricter over time to guarantee the
cooperation and commitment from the parties signatory to the
agreements.
▪ For example: Many fisheries agreements now require
observers on board vessels to make sure that the catches
recorded are accurate, and some fisheries agreements require
satellite tracking of vessels.
(Read DeSombre nd)
iv) Monitoring
Monitoring the
environmental agreements
also translated into
environmental reporting
 v) Resolving Environmental
Dispute
▪ Solving
disputes that
affecting the
environment
via political
compromise
and
diplomacy
Image:
[Link]
[Link]/a/asean-
environmental-
ministers-to-examine-
regional-haze-
issue/[Link]
 vi) Building Public Confidence
▪ The role of
political actors
and the existence
of political will
on environmental
cooperation.

Image:
[Link]
style/living/2023/02/28/man-
with-a-green-plan---meet-
malaysia039s-new-minister-for-
the-environment
 Source: [Link]

Source:
[Link]
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?v=10823
 TUTORIAL 6
By referring to a specific case or
example, analyse any one of the
above political-environmental
cooperation process
The Outcomes and the Goals of the Institutions through
Cooperation
i. To “improve” the environment
ii. To use the resource more
efficiently:
✓ Increase of eco-efficiency is
the dominating answer to
almost all challenges in the
context of environmental
sustainability goals: energy
efficiency, resource
efficiency, land-use
efficiency. Ambitious rates of
increase in eco-efficiency
Source: [Link]
(e.g. 5% p.a.) could delink energy-savings-tips/energy-efficient-label
economic growth and
environmental impact (Kurz,
2019)
The Outcomes and the Goals of the Institutions through
Cooperation
iii. To alleviate environmental
impacts
iv. To “green up” consumption
✓ If a product gets more
efficient i.e. less
resource-consuming and
hence less costly, this
creates an incentive to
buy and use more of it
(Kurz, 2019)

Source: [Link]
SUFFICIENCY
 Sufficiency: Principles for
Sustainability
▪ The basic idea of sufficiency has been around for centuries in religious
and philosophical contexts: How much is enough? How much is
necessary for a good life?
▪ The idea of sufficiency begins when structure is needed for enactment,
when more than sensory perception of “enoughness” or “too muchness”
is needed to recognize excess and to act
▪ Sufficiency as an idea is straightforward, indeed simple and intuitive,
arguably “rational.” It is the sense that, as one does more and more of an
activity, there can be enough and there can be too much.
▪ Sufficiency begins as a simple idea and, especially ecological constraint,
can lead to major social organizing principles.
▪ Critiques of economic and environmental trends often end by insisting that
economic expansion and growth-at-any-cost can not continue, that society
must recognize its self-generated predicament and accept that enough is
enough (Princen., p. 43).
 Sufficiency: Principles for
Sustainability
▪ Sufficiency addresses the following questions (Kurz, 2019):
a) How many products and services consumers actually
need?
b) Would fewer quantities and less spending reduce
consumers’ happiness (i.e., overall life satisfaction, well-
being, utility)? Interwoven but conceptually different from
the “less” is the “different” aspect: choosing a different
product (e.g. more fuel-efficient car). While most
sufficiency debates cover both aspects, the challenge
clearly is on the “less / fewer”, the “zero option”. More
efficient (“smart”) solutions easily find acceptance – at
least in market niches, from smart cars to smart homes, as
long as the “less” is avoided.
(Read Sandberg, 2021)
 Sufficiency: An Analogy
i. Analogy: “I eat because I’m hungry
but at some point I’m satiated. If I
keep eating I become bloated” OR
“I go for a walk because it feels
good, because I enjoy the
movement, the fresh air, and the
scenery, but if my physical exertion
begins to override my pleasure,
I’ve had enough”.
ii. Sufficiency is also a
commonsensical idea at the
collective level when risks are
readily perceived and serious. For
instance, “A farmer knows that
although everyone in the farm
household desires increased yields,
the risks associated with uncertain
weather and markets means one
can not push the land and the hired
hands too hard”.
 Sufficiency: Challenges
i. The core sufficiency challenge to the (about 1 billion) rich
all over the world with affluent lifestyles is: less mobility
(fewer kilometres travelled), less energy demand (lower
room temperature), less land consumption (smaller
apartments) (Kurz, 2019).
ii. Sufficiency is a challenge for individual consumer
behaviour and it has significant macro-economic
implications. It is a challenge to the core idea of economic
growth. Less consumer demand means less production,
less investment and a smaller GDP. It causes new economic
adaptation and transformation problems which are
challenging for theory and for policy (Kurz, 2019)
 Sufficiency: Challenges
iii. The sufficiency revolution is more challenging than the
efficiency revolution and has the potential of a cultural
revolution, a fundamental change of society and economy. It
is not just about eating a little bit less meat or flying less.
Sufficiency is questioning the whole concept of “pursuit of
happiness” by means of increasing the production and
consumption of more goods. It is about breaking up the
vicious circle of more needs, more income, more (alienated)
work, more (compensating) consumption. It constitutes the
duty to work against hedonistic consumerism – and
increasing “flight shame” might be a first success (Kurz,
2019).
Read:
[Link]
[Link]/mutak
hir/2024/03/1071
950/swcorp-
melaka-
selamatkan-lebih-
500kg-makanan-
minuman-di-3-
bazar-ramadan
Read:
[Link]
swcorpMY/posts/makanan-
apakah-yang-sering-
dibazirkan-oleh-rakyat-
malaysiaberdasarkan-
tinjauan-
k/4072699752816368/
 Sufficiency: Policy
Consideration
i. Today sufficiency is primarily an individual search process, testing
new consumption patterns, exploring and finding new lifestyles (social
innovation). Government policy is not supportive as it is focused on
fostering the innovation and growth process, the increase of GDP/capita
as the only relevant indicator for economic wealth (Kurz, 2019).
ii. Without a systematic and consistent government policy, sufficiency will
have little effect. Sufficiency is a challenge not only for individual
decision making but also for political decision making on the
framework conditions that are always a determinant in consumers’
decision making. A government sufficiency policy could enable and
incentivize consumers (Kurz, 2019).
iii. However, no consistent concept has been formulated yet. It has to steer
clear of paternalism and eco-dictatorship. It would be naïve to leave
it to individuals alone to change their decisions without addressing the
political framework conditions which influence these decisions (Kurz,
2019)
Case Study: China
 Case Study: China
The Clean Plate Campaign
i. In August 2020, the Chinese President Xi Jinping launched a “Clean Plate” campaign,
which aims to stop people from wasting food and remind Chinese residents that they
“should still maintain a sense of crisis about food security”.
ii. It is unsurprising, considering how food security has always been an important strategic
objective of China’s national policy and how its food supply has been greatly disturbed
back in 2020: mass flash floods damaging the summer harvest (which also left dozens
dead), its ongoing trade war with the US leading to a great decline of the US-imported
food, and the COVID-19 pandemic limiting the amount of imported food from across the
globe.
iii. Even though the food supply of China is relatively steady in recent years in which China
has managed to produce enough food to reach a certain level of food security, an
estimate suggests China may still face a food shortage of about 130 million tons by 2025
as its domestic farming population continues to shrink, possibly due to more people
moving into urban areas.
iv. Unfortunately, there’s been no evidence that this campaign had any real impact on
reducing national food waste in China. The campaign only encouraged people to stop
wasting food, but it lacked concrete control or regulation. Thus, the government later
launched a new policy: the anti-food waste law.
Source: [Link]
 Case Study: China
China Food Waste Law
i. In April 2021, Chinese lawmakers voted to adopt an anti-food waste law at a session of
the National People’s Congress (NPC) Standing Committee.
ii. The law, aimed at safeguarding the country’s food security, answers President Xi’s calls
for greater awareness regarding food security and targets primarily restaurants, which are
the biggest source of food waste in China.
✓ First, excessive leftovers are banned to stop hosts from extravagantly ordering
food to impress their guests. Restaurants have the right to charge an extra fee to any
patron who leaves excessive quantities of uneaten food. Restaurants can choose their
own charging rates, but these must be clearly displayed to consumers.
✓ Second, catering service providers are required to remind customers of food
frugality duties. Restaurants found guilty of inducing or misleading behaviours may
be fined up to 10,000 yuan (about USD$1,580). Restaurants that consistently waste
large quantities of food may also be fined up to 50,000 yuan (USD$7,900).
✓ Third, online bloggers are banned from live streaming binge-eating and
competitive eating. Anyone who distributes such contents may face a fine of up to
100,000 yuan (USD$15,800), and media outlets may even be forced to shut down if
their violations are deemed severe.

Source: [Link]
Can Malaysia impose the similar
legislation?
 Summary of the terms
a) Cooperation principles are sensitive to conflict, especially
to the need to defuse tension and prevent violence, and to
democratic ideals—fairness, non-discrimination, human
rights.
b) Efficiency principles are sensitive to technical and
economic aims - avoiding waste and matching
technological possibility and achievement to human wants
and needs.
c) Sufficiency as a set that embodies social restraint as the
logical analog to ecological constraint, a set that guides
human activities when those activities pose grave risks to
human survival (Ibid., p. 49).
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END OF CHAPTER 1