Multilateral solutions to bilateral problems: The 1972 Stockholm conference and Canadian foreign environmental policy

Abstract

Based on archival sources, this article analyzes the Canadian contribution to the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment. It finds that continental imperatives were of pivotal importance in the development of Canadian foreign environmental policy at the Stockholm conference and its preparatory meetings. In the context of the passage of Canada’s Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act, Canadian diplomats set out to use the 1972 conference as a tool to fuel the progressive development of international environmental law and to generate support for a set of marine pollution principles. Following the conference, Canadian officials employed the gains achieved at Stockholm to legitimize and institutionalize the government’s unilateral Arctic anti-pollution measures. In so doing, the government of Pierre Elliott Trudeau sought multilateral solutions to bilateral problems in the environmental sphere.