804 



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conflicting policies carried out by individual agencies often without adequate 

 background knowledge or appreciation of what other agencies are doing. 



2. Environment; Global Commons 



Closely related to resource and energy issues are those involving 

 transborder environmental questions, and more general global issues of the 

 environment: atmosphere, oceans, and outer space, all of which could be seen 

 as basically resource and dependency issues. 



To a degree far beyond earlier experience, man's national activities have 

 effects beyond borders and, in some cases, on a global scale. Transborder 

 pollution has already become an important issue in many areas, with some 

 progress in the last decade particularly in melding environmental policies, 

 and reaching agreements on dealing with the traditional problem of the global 

 commons. The issues are likely to become more severe, however, and often will 

 take on the caste of zero-sum games. 



The worldwide recession and the rise in energy prices have the effect of 

 raising the indirect costs of coping with environmental degradation, making it 

 more difficult politically in a nation-based world to restrict activities 

 whose harmful effects fall across the border. The standard problem of 

 reflecting full costs in a production process is exacerbated when the 

 externalities are felt outside a national economic system. It can be expected 

 that issues associated with acid rain, water pollution, forest degradation and 

 others will become more contentious international! 1y in the next decade as 

 their international externalities become better known. 



