The Role of Multilateral Environmental Agreements

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Britta Sjöstedt
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Agreements ◽  
Multilateral Environmental Agreements

Environment and Sustainable Development

2019 ◽  
pp. 200-228
Author(s):  
Marie-Claire Cordonier Segger ◽  
Alexandra Harrington
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Environmental Agreements ◽  
International Governance ◽  
Multilateral Environmental Agreements ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
Global Environmental Problems ◽  
System P ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
Development Goals

This chapter considers the UN contributions to treaty-making in practice on the environment and sustainable development. It begins with a brief survey of the crafting and “clustering” of multilateral environmental agreements as international responses to emerging global environmental problems. Specifically, this chapter considers the role of the UN in this process, focusing on successive waves of treaty-making over recent decades. It suggests that the UN has played a very important role in negotiations in this field, and continues to serve as a crucial and valuable actor in the implementation and refinement of these treaties and the broader problem-based clusters, in spite of very limited resources. This chapter identifies several key treaties that address a selection of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs,) leading to a concluding consideration of how international accords in this field are, in turn, contributing to the UN Charter. It suggests that, without the UN-facilitated treaties, many SDGs could be considered “hollow,” dependent on voluntary collaborations, and devoid of reliable regimes to achieve their targets. Not all relationships are equally integrated. Fragmentation, duplication, unintended overlapping of obligations or even conflicts may exist. As international governance becomes more sophisticated and complex, these interrelated instruments can be negotiated, implemented, and interactionally refined across multiple nested levels. To this end, this chapter argues that adoption of the SDGs may support greater coherence across the UN system.

scholarly journals Global governance for the environment and the role of Multilateral Environmental Agreements in conservation

Oryx ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 227-237 ◽  
Author(s):  
Achim Steiner ◽  
Lee A. Kimball ◽  
John Scanlon
Keyword(s):  
Biological Diversity ◽  
Human Impacts ◽  
Convention On Biological Diversity ◽  
Environmental Agreements ◽  
International Governance ◽  
Multilateral Environmental Agreements ◽  
Concrete Experience ◽  
National Boundaries ◽  
Barcelona Convention

The role of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) such as the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Ramsar Wetlands Convention, and the Barcelona Convention on the Mediterranean has grown increasingly important, in the context of conservation management, during the last decade as human impacts intensify and cross national boundaries more often. In resorting to MEAs it is important to maintain a clear focus on their opportunities and limitations. They are a means to resolve transboundary problems with neighbouring states and adopt harmonized approaches, they increasingly offer access to worldwide knowledge, tools and financial resources, and they can give conservation agencies a stronger mandate domestically. But they are specialized instruments focused on particular problems or sectors. The threats they address and the solutions they outline have to be evaluated in relation to overall environmental and socio-economic priorities. This entails linkages among different problems and sectors at various scales. Regional and ecosystem-level approaches are most appropriate for sorting out linkages and priorities. Extensive capacity building is needed at these levels to foster the requisite skills for integrated approaches. In addition, new mechanisms may be required at these levels to coordinate diverse specialized regimes. This does not require a monolithic, top-down approach but rather ongoing flexibility and responsiveness informed from the bottom up. We should take advantage of the new directions highlighted by the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, in 2002 and other recent international conferences to build these abilities into international governance. Conservation managers have an important role to play. By working nationally and internationally they can inform and influence the shift towards integrated and coordinated efforts, suggesting ways to accomplish this on a larger, international scale based on concrete experience in situ.

Part VIII Compliance, Implementation, and Effectiveness, Ch.56 Non-Compliance Procedures

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Doelle Meinhard
Keyword(s):  
Dispute Settlement ◽  
Environmental Agreements ◽  
Multilateral Environmental Agreements ◽  
International Treaty ◽  
Effective Implementation ◽  
Primary Rule ◽  
Rule System ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Over Time

This chapter reflects on non-compliance procedures, which have emerged in multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) as they have in other areas of international law. While the focus of international treaty negotiation may, at one point, have been the substantive issues, the scope has, over time, shifted to include efforts to ensure the effective implementation of the substantive commitments and obligations negotiated. Along with other elements, such as dispute settlement procedures, education, and capacity-building, non-compliance procedures have become a key element of the overall effort to ensure the effective implementation of MEAs. The chapter considers the role of compliance systems in MEAs, with a brief survey of the debate over the respective role of facilitation and enforcement, followed by an exploration of the relationship between the primary rule system and elements of the compliance system. It then looks at the key elements of compliance systems before studying a selection of MEA compliance systems.

COPing with Consent: Law-Making Under Multilateral Environmental Agreements

2002 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jutta Brunnée
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Governance ◽  
Environmental Agreements ◽  
Multilateral Environmental Agreements ◽  
Global Environmental Problems ◽  
International Environmental Governance ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
Interactional Processes ◽  
Legislative Processes ◽  
Law Making

The growing sense of urgency regarding various global environmental problems has prompted calls for global legislative processes that could produce binding outcomes. However, as law-making gravitates into international forums, questions are raised regarding the legitimacy of international environmental governance. Much law-making today occurs under multilateral environmental agreements (‘MEAs’), such as the Climate Change Convention and its Kyoto Protocol. The article examines the role of Conferences of the Parties (‘COPs’) in MEA-based law-making. It juxtaposes the standard conception of international law-making and an alternative account, which sees law-making not simply as crystallized in formal consent procedures but as continuous interactional processes. The interactional account can help build the foundations for legitimate international environmental governance, and can provide important guidance to law-makers, even as they, even as they continue to operate within a formal, consent-based framework.

Rethinking Private Authority

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica F. Green
Keyword(s):  
Green Building ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Multilateral Environmental Agreements ◽  
The Past ◽  
Delegation Of Authority ◽  
Private Authority ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
Private Actors ◽  
Treaty Implementation

This book examines the role of nonstate actors in global environmental politics, arguing that a fuller understanding of their role requires a new way of conceptualizing private authority. It identifies two distinct forms of private authority—one in which states delegate authority to private actors, and another in which entrepreneurial actors generate their own rules, persuading others to adopt them. Drawing on a wealth of empirical evidence spanning a century of environmental rule making, the book shows how the delegation of authority to private actors has played a small but consistent role in multilateral environmental agreements over the past fifty years, largely in the area of treaty implementation. This contrasts with entrepreneurial authority, where most private environmental rules have been created in the past two decades. The book traces how this dynamic and fast-growing form of private authority is becoming increasingly common in areas ranging from organic food to green building practices to sustainable tourism. It persuasively argues that the configuration of state preferences and the existing institutional landscape are paramount to explaining why private authority emerges and assumes the form that it does. In-depth cases on climate change provide evidence for the book's arguments. The book demonstrates that authority in world politics is diffused across multiple levels and diverse actors, and it offers a more complete picture of how private actors are helping to shape our response to today's most pressing environmental problems.

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