On 5-6 June 2025, the RIAS is organizing its annual Policy Workshop dedicated to “The Montreal Moment: Ozone Depletion and the Rise of International Environmental Governance.” The event will take place in Middelburg, and it is co-sponsored by Utrecht University.
In the 1970s, scientists discovered that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) – chemical compounds that were widely used as refrigerant gases and as propellants in aerosol sprays – were damaging the ozone layer, a vital region of the Earth’s atmosphere that absorbs most of the Sun’s ultraviolet radiation. The popularization of expressions like “ozone depletion” and “ozone hole” was instrumental in mobilizing public opinion and politicians alike around the catastrophic consequences of man-made climate change. The US Congress held a series of hearings on the matter, and environmentalist groups worldwide multiplied their efforts to educate, lobby, organize, and share scientifically sound information. This, in turn, generated the response of the industry, which, through groups like the Alliance for Responsible CFC Policy, tried to downsize the threat arguing that the science was still uncertain. After years of campaigning and confrontation, the Montreal Protocol was finalized in 1987, representing a landmark multilateral environmental agreement.
The ways in which the Montreal Protocol was achieved, the discussions and negotiations it unleashed and entailed, the questions and issues it raised on multiple scales invite policymakers and historians to further reflect on the origins, development, and legacies of a complex international environmental governance system. The questions at the center of this workshop are many. Was the Montreal Protocol an endpoint of a longer history of international efforts at managing the environment? Or was it the harbinger of new forms of multilateral cooperation? What does its trajectory reveal about similar attempts to regulate global environmental problems like climate change, soil erosion, or pollution? What role did non-state actors and nongovernmental organizations play in getting it signed? By contrast, how did corporations react to its development and against its provisions? And how did governments position themselves in the broader debates around international environmental safeguards that the Montreal Protocol embodied? How was scientific evidence understood, conveyed, interpreted, and managed in this context? And finally, how did systemic and external variables such as economic volatility and industrial development impact the international environmental politics of the 1970s and 1980s? Our discussions shed further light on the functioning and limits of global environmental governance.
You can find the complete program here.
If you are interested in this event, please send us an email at info@roosevelt.nl
