The recent gathering of the parties to the Montreal Protocol provided some interesting insights into the workings of what has been touted as the "most successful environmental treaty" ever enacted.

It struck me that the real heavy lifting was done behind closed doors,in "contact groups" or "bi-lateral" discussions, much like how politics works everywhere else in the world. This was a bit disappointing.  I had expected a more open and transparent process but it quickly became obvious that this forum was an insiders game. It seems that these days the more one hears about transparency, the less transparent the organization is likely to be.  

While is appears that much good work has been done in the past it now seems that the goal is to move from ozone depletion to climate change.  While climate change is a noble pursuit it seems a bit duplicitious to subvert a treaty designed to solve one problem into another problem area.  It could be argued that the ends justify the means, but this argument only supports the duplicity, it does not resolve it.

The recent meeting of the parties of the Montreal Protocol once again tested the definitions of "sustainable". While it appears that the Protocol has done some very important work in tackling the problem of ozone depletion it felt like the primary focus at this meeting was how to keep the funds flowing into the coffers of the Ozone Secretariat.

I suppose that such is the fate of all quasi-governmental organizations but whatever happened to doing a good job and then moving on?  In this case the treaty has done some very good work but it probably is time to consider downsizing.  Why do well over a thousand delegates, staff, and lobbyists have to travel to some distant location to meet for a week to make decisions that could be handled by teleconferencing?  Why not send the money to help developing nations provide clean water to their people or some other cause?

We were somewhat disappointed by what we found at this meeting.  While we are not pro-chemical, we found it highly unusual for an environmental group to become so focused on banning methyl bromide that they offered up "alternative" (methyl iodide) that certainly appears to be much harder on the environment and its people than the strawman product methyl bromide.  I suppose if the goal is to eventually ban all agricultural chemicals then this path again fits in with the Machaivellian approach.  

This approach does not seem to be suastainable on many fronts; it does not promote sustainable solutions to problems we are facing with food production.  It is not a good use of resources and it over spending to solve the ozone problem and therefore in the end the Protocol itself is not sustainable. We had hoped for a more positive experience

We have spent quite a bit of time looking for sustainable production technologies and methods but we thought it might be time to check in on some "high" level topics which relate to sustainability.  So we are off to the meeting of the parties of the Montreal Protocol Treaty to Protect the Ozone.

The Montreal Protocol has been the most successful environmental treaty to date, according to the news reports we have found.  We are excited at the prospects of seeing just how this group has been so successful at saving the ozone layer. We are looking forward to hearing of the progress in the "healing" of the antarctic ozone hole and networking with others who are concerned about producing food in a safe and sustainable way.

Hopefully we can gather new information on alternative methods to treat crops that for years have relied on methyl bromide as one of the primary production tools.  

We will continue to post our findings as we participate in the meetings.  Stay tuned for further updates.