Waste of Effort? International Environmental Agreements

International cooperation will be critical to solving the world's toughest environmental problems, including climate change, ozone depletion, and biodiversity. Regrettably, most evidence suggests that the 1,000 or so different International Environmental Agreements (IEAs) operating today are ineffectual, merely ratifying business-as-usual outcomes and doing little to improve the environment. But much of that empirical analysis faces two obstacles: (1) limited data from before the IEAs were enacted and thus an inability to make before-and-after comparisons; and (2) difficulty estimating the counterfactual outcomes – what would have happened absent the agreements. In this paper we test the effectiveness of one particular IEA – the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal. In this special case we have data on international waste shipments from both before and after countries ratify the agreement, along with a unique approach to identifying the treaty's effect using annual bilateral waste shipments among countries before and after one of the trading partners signs the agreement. Despite the strengths of this approach, we find almost no evidence that the Convention has resulted in less waste being shipped among countries. JEL Codes: F18, F13, Q53, Q56