50 Years of U.S. Resistance to Environmental Reparations

Washington, D.C., July 6, 2023 – As the world’s wealthiest countries continue to avoid making serious financial commitments to developing states on the front lines of the climate crisis, declassified records published today by the National Security Archive document more than 50 years of U.S. resistance to environmental compensation measures. Among the highlights is a Nixon-era intelligence report noting “increasing African militancy on development matters” and predicting that “views linking environment and development will be with us in the years to come.”

Often seen as an idea that formed in the early 1990s, documents posted today demonstrate that calls by developing nations for environmental liability—and U.S. opposition to those proposals—began nearly 20 years earlier in 1972. These records shed light on the various ways that the U.S. government has tried to avoid getting what President George H. W. Bush called a “big bill” for its environmental impacts in talks about compensation, liability, and reparations programs meant to alleviate the impacts of climate change.

Just a few weeks ago, the climate finance issue was the focus of a week-long dispute at the 58^th session of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Subsidiary Bodies Climate Conference, which drew harsh criticism and nearly collapsed when governments were unable to agree on an agenda. Held annually in Bonn, Germany, the conference prepares the groundwork for the yearly Conference of Parties (COP) summit. On the penultimate day of the Conference, the parties finally adopted an agenda of issues that will be taken up at COP28, which will be held in the United Arab Emirates in November.

Developed and developing nations were split on how to implement the historic Loss and Damage Fund adopted at the November 2022 COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, which promised to become the most important resource in the emerging climate finance landscape. While adoption of the Fund was a significant and historic development, recent events and the declassified record suggest that developed countries will continue to resist practical efforts to implement climate finance programs.

These records are drawn from multiple sources, including the State Department’s Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series, the George H. W. Bush Presidential Library, the William J. Clinton Presidential Library, and from the recently published Digital National Security Archive set, The Diplomacy of Climate Change: U.S. Policy from the Montreal Protocol to the Paris Agreement, 1981-2015. This collection also complements previous Archive Electronic Briefing Books on White House climate change policy. For more information on collections related to environmental diplomacy and international environmental negotiations, see the National Security Archive’s Environmental Diplomacy Project.

Early Resistance Under Nixon

In a precursor to what would become the UNFCCC, the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (UNCHE) in Stockholm was the first international forum to make the environment a major issue and marked a turning point in the development of international environmental politics. As environmental awareness grew in the 1960s and 1970s, so too did developing countries’ calls for reparations and the resistance of wealthier states to accepting responsibility for their contributions to environmental harms.

As the issue has gained more attention in recent years, many scholars and policymakers have said that the first official calls for a loss and damage fund were made in 1991 by the Alliance of Small Island Sates (AOSIS) when the UNFCCC was being drafted. The AOSIS proposed the creation of an international insurance pool to finance the states most at risk from sea level rise; but the proposal was rejected, and the framework that was adopted contained no mention of the fund.[1]

However, declassified documents from the State Department's FRUS series show how the U.S. anticipated and reacted to calls from developing countries for environmental reparations and compensation almost 20 years before the AOSIS proclamation.

In April 1972, two months before the Stockholm conference, African countries convened at the United Nations African Institute for Economic Development and Planning and called for “full compensation and reparations” for any damage and exploitation done to their natural and human environment by developed countries. A rarely cited 1972 article from the New York Times archive reported a proposal by the Algerian delegation under which eight African countries proclaimed their right to payment for “the damage and pillage of natural resources” by developed countries.

“The very principles of international law imply, for countries which have suffered from exploitation in the course of history or are still suffering from it, a right to reparation by the countries which have partially based (and continue to base) their growth on this exploitation,” the countries declared. Contextualizing this system of environmental exploitation as a facet of “apartheid,” the African delegation emphasized the need for these issues to be discussed in Stockholm.[2]

The FRUS documents (Documents 1 - 5) illuminate the U.S. position on the joint African stance ahead of the Stockholm Conference, revealing that U.S. officials wanted to avoid linking “development-related issues,” such as trade and natural resource extraction, with environmental degradation. In the days leading up to Stockholm, an intelligence note drafted by the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research said African countries’ calls for reparations were most likely unserious and did not mean “actual reparations.” Furthermore, the note assessed that the call to link the environment and development was a sign of increased “African militancy” that would be “with us in the years to come.” Fearful that a confrontation with African nations against compensation would be counter-productive, the intelligence note supported a more “hands-off approach” in the hopes of mollifying the African states. (Document 1)

As a result of the conference, participants adopted the Stockholm Declaration and Action Plan for the Human Environment, a set of 26 principles that placed environmental issues at the forefront of international concerns. The Declaration also marked the beginning of dialogue between industrialized and developing countries “on the link between economic growth, the pollution of air, water, and oceans, and the well-being of people around the world.”[3] No commitments to concrete pollution reductions or specific compensation agreements for developing countries were agreed upon, but Principle 22 called for states to continue to develop a system of international law regarding liability and compensation for pollution and other environmental damage.[4]

The U.S. conference delegation, led by Russell E. Train and Christian Herter, Jr., opposed Principle 22, “pointing out that many forces affect export earnings, and to single out any of these…for compensatory treatment would be wrong in principle.” (Document 2) Train, the head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), was chair of the delegation, while Herter, a former Vice President of Government Relations and Public Affairs at Mobil oil and gas company, was vice chair and was tasked with “formulating the US official position.” Explaining their opposition, the U.S. representatives outlined that their “delegation was opposed, as a matter of principle, to compensating nations for declines in their export earnings regardless of cause.”[5]

Following the conference, Train and Herter reported an overall successful showing by the U.S. delegation despite the issue of “compensation for the LDCs [Least-Developed Countries].” (Document 4) In a memo to President Nixon, Train concluded that, although the U.S. played “a strong role and gained practically all of its objectives,” it was evident “that it is not possible to discuss environmental protection with the LDC’s completely outside the context of development objectives.” (Document 3) Additionally, in Herter’s report of the conference to Secretary of State William Rogers, he explained that, despite the “fairly activist radical line” set by developing countries like Algeria and Tanzania, “they did not prevail and there was no major confrontation between the DCs [developing countries] and LDCs.” He concluded that “the delegation was exemplary in terms of supporting previously agreed U.S. positions on a great variety of issues.” (Document 4)

While negotiations at Stockholm did bring forth the establishment of a $100 million environmental fund, to which the U.S. contributed $40 million (Document 5), the UNCHE marked the first chapter in the United States’ long legacy of resistance to environmental compensation and accountability.

Paving the Way from Stockholm

In a previous National Security Archive briefing book, Dr. Robert Wampler documented the “see-saw” of U.S. leadership on climate change, outlining the back and forth of “commitment, to rejection, and back to engagement” from presidents Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush. What has remained consistent, however, is U.S. resistance to calls from the most vulnerable LDCs for a compensation funding mechanism, and the remaining documents in today’s briefing book explore this specific opposition in greater depth. (Documents 6 - 17).

Nearly 20 years after the Stockholm Conference, when the UNFCCC was being drafted in 1991, AOSIS countries proposed the establishment of an international insurance pool to “compensate the most vulnerable small island and low-lying coastal developing countries for loss and damage arising from sea level rise.”[6] But developed nations had come no closer to acknowledging their disproportionate degradative impacts to the environment. Rather, the United States and other developed countries continued to emphasize the importance of scientific research, market mechanisms, and regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, all while ensuring the most flexible emissions commitments.[7] The AOSIS proposal was rejected, and the 1992 UNFCCC contained no mention of loss and damage.

President George H. W. Bush strongly supported the efforts around the UNFCCC and attempted to secure participation from the biggest greenhouse gas polluting nations.[8] However, the administration chose to emphasize scientific research over funding mechanisms. Proposals for a separate global climate fund were “premature” and raised “serious concerns,” according to a State Department concept paper on “measures that could be used to implement response strategies to limit or adapt to global climate change.” (Document 6) Instead, in a meeting with leaders from other developing countries, the Bush administration advocated for increased developing country participation in meeting emissions targets. (Document 7)

In the months leading up to the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Bush reaffirmed to other developed countries the need to balance environmental protection with economic growth. In separate meetings with Chancellor Helmut Kohl of Germany and Japanese Minister of Trade Kozo Watanabe, President Bush remarked that he didn’t want developing countries to send “a big bill” to developed countries over finance measures during the Rio Conference (Document 8 and 9). “I am not going to commit to things that will halt our economy…I can’t go to Rio and get myself embarrassed because we can’t satisfy the demands of the LDCs.” (Document 9)

Previously published briefing books from the National Security Archive’s Environmental Diplomacy Project outline how the arc of President Bill Clinton’s leadership on climate policy led to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, only to be curtailed by Congress. These accounts focus largely on the issue of emission targets for developed countries compared with large, polluting, developing countries like India, China, and the oil-producing OPEC countries. (Documents 10 – 11) With this came concern about UNFCCC Annex language around “adaptation and compensation” for LDCs ahead of COP6 in November 2000 and with the possibility that OPEC countries might “insert a ‘poison pill’ into the negotiations by demanding compensation for hypothetical losses in oil revenue.” (Document 12).

Regardless, high-level officials within the Clinton administration understood there was no way to tell a “good emissions story about the US.” In a 1999 evaluation of statistics on U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions sent to Roger Ballentine, Chairman of the White House Climate Change Task Force, Michael Gillenwater, the head of the GHG Inventory Program at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), wrote that he had no credible data that would “put a better light on things… The bottom line is: NO. We look badly in virtually every way that you look at it.” (Document 13)

A Post-Kyoto World

From the time the Kyoto Protocol was adopted in December 1997 to when it went into force in February 2005, AOSIS countries continued to call for an insurance mechanism for developing countries to cover damages caused by climate change. In late 2007, loss and damage gained increased attention at COP13, and the Bali Action Plan became the first formally negotiated UN text to include the phrase “loss and damage,” calling for “disaster reduction strategies and means to address loss and damage associated with climate change impacts in developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change.”[9]

To further avoid liability for compensation to LDCs, developed countries have supported financing mechanisms to help “transition” less developed countries via adaptation and mitigation strategies. However, scholars and independent experts have found that these kinds of financial mechanisms, such as the Green Climate Fund established at COP16 in Cancún, continue to allow developed countries to skirt responsibility. (Document 14)[10]

Even after the landmark Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage (WIM) was established at the 2013 COP19 in Warsaw, which acknowledged that “loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change includes, and in some cases, involves more than, that which can be reduced by adaptation,” the mandate made no mention of liability or compensation for loss and damage. As evidenced in several State Department memos, the vague mandate of WIM allowed the Obama Administration to further delay the creation of a dedicated “fund to compensate poor countries for loss and damage ahead of the 2015 COP21 in Paris.” (Documents 15 - 17)

Ultimately, the loss and damage principle was adopted in the Paris Agreement, but, at the urging of developed countries like the United States, a clause was included to explicitly state that its inclusion “does not involve or provide a basis for any liability or compensation.”[11] It wasn’t until 2022, at COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, when the parties, after nearly a half century of calls for ecological reparations, officially adopted the proposal for a Loss and Damage Fund for countries hit hardest by climate disasters.

An Uncertain Future for Loss and Damage

The worsening impacts of climate change will only exacerbate tensions around financing. Events like the 2022 flooding in Pakistan and India, droughts in China, and heatwaves in the MENA region and Sub-Saharan Africa have already led to increased calls for developed countries to pay up. In fact, the U.S. intelligence community dedicated an entire section of its 2023 Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community report to rising tensions over climate financing. As high- and middle-income countries continue to fall short of their 2015 Paris Agreement pledges, climate change will “increasingly exacerbate risks to U.S. national security interests as…geopolitical tensions mount about the global response to the challenge.”[12]

Looking toward COP28, the future of the Loss and Damage Fund in the climate agenda is uncertain. Contrary to some media accounts, the parameters adopted at COP27 for the fund still do not consider the funding arrangements to be “liability, compensation, or reparations” paid by developed countries.[13] As this briefing book indicates, the U.S. delegation, along with other developed nations, have consistently opposed such language. Questions about which countries will pay into the fund, and especially about the relative contributions of developed and developing countries, will surely dominate future climate summits.