In the world today, it is not rare to see a chronic environmental issue developing into an acute political conflict over the region of interest among few nearby nations, and the North Sea is certainly not an exception to this modern paradigm. The international conflict that now rages over the North Sea originates from the severe pollution of the North Sea that has been intensifying over the past several decades since the 1970s. The fact that the North Sea is adjacent to some of the world?s most heavily industrialized nations, such as Germany and England, and the other developed European countries such as Netherlands and Norway indeed renders the job of tracking down the culprit of such pollution very difficult. With so many rivers, canals, and other waterways flowing simultaneously into the North Sea in myriad nations, the involved parties have been denying their assumed responsibility to the mitigation of this issue, while somewhat hastily accusing and blaming each other.

At this very moment, the situation has cooled down to a perilous stalemate after years of conflict in the European Union?s Board of Environmental Commission. That is, although no single nation has been identified as the main contaminator of the North Sea, the European Union recommended all involved parties to actively take local legislative measures to reduce the water pollution along their own coastline, as this collaborative effort would be essentially the only way to mitigate the imminent crisis. Nonetheless, the Scandinavian states such as Norway and Denmark are still blaming England and Germany for not taking measures drastic enough to solve this problem, considering that these two industrial giants are most likely to be responsible for a large amount of waste products somehow flowing into the North Sea. England and Germany, however, are also so called the ?backbone? of the European Union, whose economic and political power is undeniably unmatched by the other European states sharing the coastline of the North Sea. Naturally, despite growing suspicion and some degree of evidence, the Scandinavian states as of now really do not have much voice in continuing their denunciation of England and Germany over this issue.

The current political conflict over the pollution of the North Sea, as many experts point out, does suggest the rather ominous, dark reality: the global community?s lacking concern with accelerating waves of environmental destruction today. Should these nations be truly willing to save the precious North Sea, they must act first, while the identification of the true culprit can be reserved for the future. Also, the fact that Europe, unarguably one of the world?s most developed regions, harbors such shameful, mudslinging clash indicates that the situation would be a lot worse in numerous developing countries around the world.