Issues in Focus : Environment

An expanding global population, rapid conversion of critical habitat to other uses, and the spread of invasive species to non-native habitats pose a serious threat to the world's natural resources and to all of us who depend on them for food, fuel, shelter, and medicine. Policies that distort markets and provide incentives for unsustainable development intensify the problem. When people around the globe lack access to energy, clean water, food, or a livable environment, the economic instability and political unrest that may result can be felt in the form of costly peacekeeping and humanitarian interventions or lost markets.

Addressing these problems and achieving sustainable management of natural resources worldwide requires the cooperation and commitment of all countries. The State Department is seeking to forge this cooperation and these commitments through a variety of diplomatic approaches globally, regionally and bilaterally. These include negotiating effective science-based global treaties and promoting their enforcement, developing international initiatives with key countries to harness market forces to the cause of sustainable development, and creating a foreign policy framework in which innovative public-private partnerships involving U.S. interests can flourish in developed and developing countries worldwide. This movement of environmental issues into the mainstream of U.S. foreign policy has come to be known as Environmental Diplomacy.

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