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The first Earth Day protests, which took place on April 22, 1970, brought 20 million Americans鈥�10% of the U.S. population at the time鈥攊nto the streets. Recognizing the power of this growing movement, President Richard Nixon and Congress responded by creating the  and enacting a wave of laws, including the , the  and the . 

But Earth Day鈥檚 impact extended far beyond the United States. A cadre of professionals in the U.S. State Department understood that environmental problems didn鈥檛 stop at national borders, and set up mechanisms for addressing them jointly with other countries.

For scholars like me who study , the challenge of getting nations to act together is a central issue. In my view, without the first Earth Day, global action against problems such as trade in endangered species, stratospheric ozone depletion, and climate change would have taken much longer鈥攐r might never have happened at all.

Alarms across the world

In 1970, governments around the world were contending with transborder pollution challenges. For example, sulfur and nitrogen oxides emitted from coal-fired power plants in the United Kingdom traveled hundreds of miles on northerly winds, then returned to Earth in northern Europe as . This process was killing lakes and forests in Germany and Sweden. 

Realizing that solutions would only be effective through common effort, countries convened the  in Stockholm from June 5 to 16, 1972. Representatives of 113 governments attended and adopted the Stockholm Declaration on the Human Environment, which asserts that humans have a fundamental right to an environment that permits . They also passed a resolution to create a new international environmental institution. 

Contrary to its posture today, the United States was an ardent proponent of the conference. The U.S. delegation advanced a , including a moratorium on commercial whaling, a convention to regulate ocean dumping, and the creation of a World Heritage Trust to preserve wilderness areas and scenic natural landmarks. 

President Nixon issued a statement when the conference concluded, observing that 鈥渇or the first time in history, the nations of the world sat down together to seek better understanding of each other鈥檚 environmental problems and to explore opportunities for .鈥�

Other nations were far more skeptical. France and the United Kingdom, for example, were wary of potential regulations that might hamper the British-French fleet of , which had just entered operation in 1969. 

Developing countries too were suspicious, viewing environmental initiatives as part of an agenda advanced by wealthy nations that would prevent them from industrializing. 鈥淚 do not believe we are prepared to ,鈥� Brazilian delegate Bernardo de Azevedo Brito stated in response to calls from industrialized countries to curb pollution.

A UN agency for the environment

Largely because of U.S. leadership, industrialized nations agreed to establish and provide initial funding for what is arguably the world鈥檚 premier global environmental institution: the United Nations Environment Programme. UNEP catalyzed negotiation of the 1985 Vienna Convention and its follow-on, the 1987 , a treaty to restrict production and use of substances that . Today the agency continues to drive international efforts on issues including pollution control, biodiversity conservation, and climate change. 

, who was director of economic and social affairs at the U.S. State Department鈥檚 Bureau of International Organization Affairs, had been circulating the idea of , and had garnered support from the Nixon administration. But creating a new international environmental institution could only happen with financial support from industrialized countries. 

In an address to Congress on Feb. 8, 1972, Nixon proposed 鈥攃lose to $600 million in today鈥檚 dollars鈥攖o support effective international cooperation on environmental problems and create a central coordination point for U.N. activities. Recognizing that the United States was the world鈥檚 major polluter, the Nixon administration provided 30% of this sum over the first five years.

Over the next two decades the United States was the largest single contributor to the fund, which supports UNEP鈥檚 work worldwide. By the early 1990s, it was providing $21 million annually鈥攅quivalent to about $38 million in today鈥檚 dollars. 

As I discuss in my forthcoming book on UNEP, however, after Republicans won control of both houses of Congress in 1994, the U.S. contribution dropped to $5.5 million in 1997. It has stayed at about $6 million per year since, a decrease of 84%. Today the  is 30% less than that of , whose economy is 20 times smaller. 

Ceding leadership

Regrettably, in my view, the United States has relinquished its longtime role as a leader on global environmental issues. President Trump has pursued what he calls an 鈥溾�� foreign policy that includes  and . 

International problems demand global cooperation and leadership by example. Developing countries are more reticent to commit to multilateral agreements if the rich and powerful ones withdraw or defy the rules. 

As political scientist and U.N. expert  has written, the United States has swung for decades between . When U.S. support ebbs, Luck observes, the U.N. is 鈥渋n limbo, neither strengthened nor abandoned,鈥� and the global community is less able to resolve fundamental problems.

The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare nations鈥� inability to . No other government has yet been able to fill the void left by the United States. 

I see the 50th anniversary of Earth Day as a fitting time to rethink American engagement in global governance. As President Nixon said in his speech outlining support for UNEP in 1972: 

鈥淲hat has dawned dramatically upon us in recent years 鈥� is a new recognition that to a significant extent man commands as well the very destiny of this planet where he lives, and the destiny of all life upon it. We have even begun to see that these destinies are not many and separate at all 鈥� that in fact .鈥�

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