How effective is international cooperation in addressing transnational environmental issues? This essay will examine how international cooperation works together, how effective the international community's contingency plans have been in achieving environmental change in transnational issues. Transnational issues refer to threats to environmental issues that affect more than one nation and their interests, while issues involving states that are can be affected in various ways. To effectively investigate whether or not international cooperation is actually achieved in transnational issues, there will be the use of case studies that have investigated: the retreat of Antarctic ice and the effects that sea level rise has had on citizens of Bangladesh due to rising sea levels. To effectively understand this problem, international theories such as Neorealism and Reason of State will be used. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay The United Nations is an example of how states work together on transnational issues. The organization shares strong neoliberal views. The structure of the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) is an example of neoliberalism as nation states are shifting some power and control to the UN Environmental Program (Evans, 2012). UNEP is an organization capable of bringing together 193 nations, to cooperate on transnational environmental issues (UNEP, 2009). Of these 193 nations there are seven significant members: China, the United States, Russia, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and India (UNEP, 2009). These UNEP members are struggling towards the utopian model. The utopian model refers to the attempt to create a place of ideal, social, moral and political conditions (Evans, 2012), this evident in the way in which the United Nations and UNEP strive to create better political conditions for environmental issues transnational. This effort to call for significant change in transnational environmental issues was observed in the Magdeburg Environmental Forum. The Magdeburg Environmental Forum brought together 250 high-ranking associates representing key scientific, political, industrial and NGO sectors in the Sustainable Mobility – The post-2012 CO2 agenda (United Nations environment, 2012). This program also achieved significant success by reaching an agreement with the German manufacturing company Daimler AG, which agreed to extend the Memorandum of Understanding with UNEP (Brock, 2012). Daimler said that with the help of UNEP it will continue to optimize its engines for environmental efficiency, increase the efficiency of the fuel cells of hybrid cars and continue to explore future renewable energy resources for cars (Brock, 2012). UNEP has succeeded in bringing renewable energy resources in developing countries to the center of discussion. A success of the 2002 Sustainable Development Report was to highlight that more needed to be done to bridge the gap between developed and developing nations in the Sustainable Development Report (York, 2012). UNEP sees India as an example of how investments in the stagnant renewable energy market could help close the gap (UNEP, 2015). In 2003, UNEP established the UNEP Solar Loan project. This project was initiated with a partnership between the branches of the United Nations and two of the banking groupsmost powerful in India: Canara Bank and Syndicate Bank, and their sponsored Grameen banks (UNEP, 2015). This project succeeded in disbursing 19,533 loans and kick-starting renewable energy investments in India. In 2011, India was the largest producer in the large renewable energy market, increasing by 62% to $12 billion (UNEP, 2015). While there has been, the United Nations has achieved relative success with cooperation among states on environmental matters. The intentional community has shown an inability to address the issue of setting a firm limit on greenhouse gas emissions from human activities. The greenhouse effect refers to the warming effect due to (greenhouse) gases such as CO2 and NOX trapping heat from the sun in the atmosphere (Goverment, 2015). This is evidenced by the fact that it took UN members two years to agree on the Kyoto Protocol after already agreeing that the limits for the UN Framework Convention were inadequate (United Nations, 2014). This lack of transnational cooperation is evident in the continued deterioration and retreat of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Professor Alexander (et al) during the 1990s stated that rising surface temperatures in Antarctica will cause sea levels to rise and stated that ice shelves such as Larsen are deteriorating due to rising temperatures global surface air (Church, 2010). . The professor highlighted the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide), particularly those emitted by power plants. However, these recommendations were never heeded and this was partly due to the nation's failure to cooperate effectively under the UN in the Kyoto Protocol. The Protocol is an international agreement between United Nations members and non-member nations to establish mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions (Evans, 2012). Members of the Protocol failed to reduce global CO2 emissions (a key objective of the Protocol) during its period of authority (1995–2010) (Clark, 2012). Global CO2 emissions were not decreasing, on the contrary they were tending to increase. During the time the Protocol was in force, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (established by the United Nations) had published its findings and observations. Their assessments in the 1990s informed nations that there was a clear link between increasing greenhouse gases (such as CO2) emitted by human movement as a major cause of global warming. The 2007 report stated with 90% certainty that global warming over the last 50 years is due to human activities (Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change, 1990). The 2007 report informed the international community that this increase in global average surface air temperatures would lead to the melting of land ice, causing seas to rise by at least 20 cm by 2030, and by 65 cm by the end of the next century ( Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007). However, despite the IPCC's warnings and recommendations, the international community has failed to successfully cooperate under the Kyoto Protocol. The failure of the Kyoto Protocol can be attributed to the fact that nations such as the United States, India, China and Australia (Australia finally ratified the protocol in 2007) failed to cooperate on agreements to limit their greenhouse gas emissions (Clark, 2012). The reason why these nations may have chosen not to cooperate with the international community is the theory of raison d'état. This means that countries will not and will not cooperatethey will accept the limits because, as these nations saw them, the limits would not benefit or strengthen their position in any way, and therefore they would not cooperate (Evans, 2012). This was seen when US President Bush did not want to ratify the Kyoto Protocol as it would harm their economy, President Bush also stated that the Protocol was not fair as other large polluters such as China and India were not obligated to reduce emissions and the The president believed this would put the United States at an economic disadvantage (Reynolds, 2001). This lack of cooperation can be attributed to individual countries pushing their own interests above transitional issues and represents a major problem for international cooperation, as there is no truly effective way to coerce an economically strong nation like China or the United States to accept these protocols (Biden, 2015). Failure to collaborate has had dramatic effects on the stability and security of the West Antarctic Ice Shelf (WAIS). The WAIS is a marine ice sheet composed of two sections: ice that is anchored to the ground below sea level and ice shelves that are floating extensions of ice attached horizontally to the ice sheet. The WAIS contains 3 million cubic kilometers of ice; if this volume of water were released into the sea it would cause a sea level rise of 4 meters (Spencer Weart & American Institute of Physics, 2015). The effects that global warming has had on the WAIS were witnessed in the 1960s when the retreat of the Wordie Ice Shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula was recorded, by the 1980s the peninsula had been completely disintegrated (Vaughan, 2010). Once again the international community and the world would witness a consequence of the failure of cooperation on global warming, when the North Larsen B Ice Shelf collapsed in 2002. The collapse of the North Larsen B Ice Shelf took only 6 weeks to occur (NASA, 2010). the ice cap and the melting of glaciers, as a result of anthropogenic activities, have led to an increase in the acceleration of sea level rise (Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change, 2007). According to National Geographic, the current average annual sea level is 3.2mm, which is double the rate of sea rise over the past 80 years, with the Antarctic region contributing about 0.2mm of sea level rise of the sea every year (National Geographic, 2015). These sea level rises are having dramatic effects on low-lying nations like Bangladesh. The Ganges-Brahmaputra delta in Bangladesh is the region that is and will be most affected by current sea level rise (Smith, 2015). The Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta is located in Bangladesh and West Bengal India, is the largest delta in Asia and is home to approximately 111 million people (Union of Concerned Scientists, 2011), the majority of whom are vulnerable and economically dependent from the delta lands to earn a living. The Sandwip Islands which lie in the Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta are already experiencing the adverse effects of rising sea levels due to global warming; this is evident from the way the land of Sanwip Islands, such as Kutubdia, has eroded (Vidal, 2013). Rising sea levels will pollute the water table with salt water causing a saline solution that will pollute the land and prevent anything from being grown (Vidal, 2013). In addition to polluting agricultural land, rising sea levels can cause erosion of large areas of the islands. This is evident over a 20 year period, 2015).