Tramelling The Illegal Wildlife Trading: A Comparative Legislative Analysis of China and India

Illegal wildlife trade is one of the major transnational crimes. Transnational Crime, by its very nature, is problematic as it surpasses national jurisdictions, as well as the parameters of information systems and law enforcement agencies. Illegal wildlife trade networks increasingly operate like global multinational businesses, connecting local markets to the global markets through complex and interlinked networks.Against this background, CITES was entered into, multinational environmental agreement to which 183 nations are parties to it and India, being a member of CITES, in compliance with the guidelines, has enacted an umbrella of 8 legislation for the protection of wildlife in India. But despite this austere legislation, India is progressively becoming a hub of illegal wildlife trade.The illegal laundering of wild-caught animals via legal pathways is subject to increased scrutiny. It appears that illegal wildlife traders are rampantly using other covert methods to smuggle these animals into the territories of target consumer countries, such as China. Once they enter into the jurisdiction of destination countries that permit legal trade in this species, it becomes arduous for the relevant enforcement agencies to distinguish between the wild-caught and captive-bred animals.The author undertakes to carry out a comparative analysis of the existing legislation of China concerning India to understand whether the legislation is robust enough for the protection of the wildlife and how the enforcement mechanism can be strengthened for the advancement of the endangered species.

Part VIII Compliance, Implementation, and Effectiveness, Ch.51 Compliance Theory

This chapter describes the conceptual and theoretical challenges raised by efforts to understand international environmental agreement (IEA) compliance and effectiveness. Both compliance and non-compliance can arise for reasons unrelated to an IEA's causal influence. Equating IEA compliance (comparing state behaviours to legal standards) with IEA influence can overstate the latter by conflating IEA-induced compliance and ‘coincidental’ compliance, in which state behaviours meet IEA standards for reasons unrelated to the IEA. States may negotiate IEA obligations that require no change in their behaviours, may comply because doing so is cheaper than violation, or may lack the capacity to violate IEA rules. Equating non-compliance with a lack of IEA influence also misleads because it ignores the fact that IEAs can lead states to take well-intended actions that fall short of legal standards, as when IEAs set ambitious obligations or exogenous changes put compliance out of reach. Indeed, IEAs with aggressive obligations may be highly effective despite having high non-compliance rates. Thus, the chapter argues that investigations of compliance improve to the extent that scholars use them to identify the causal influence of IEAs rather than a causal assessment of rule-following.

Environmental agreement under the non-interference principle: the case of ASEAN agreement on transboundary haze pollution

It is widely understood that the environmental problem is getting borderless and challenging, requiring concerted efforts of many states and increasing the need for international agreements. However, only for the agreement to exist may not be sufficient—the agreement needs to be credible: obliging the signatories with actions associated with the goal, displaying clear and unambiguous rules, and involving third parties in the dispute settlement. Unfortunately, in the presence of the non-interference principle, the creation of a credible agreement may be implausible as, conceptually, the principle is innately antipodal to hard obligations and third-party involvement in the dispute settlement. This case study seeks to understand how the legalization of the ASEAN Agreement of Transboundary Haze Pollution conformed to the non-interference principle and influenced Indonesia, the main laggard, in dealing with the predicament accordingly. Diverging with the common understanding, the agreement seems to carry strong obligation and precision, as shown in the main agreement and its protocols. However, the apparent downside lies in the lack of delegation dimension, as the current dispute resolution is made through diplomatic efforts that led to fruitless outcomes. This study counters the simplistic view of the association between the non-interference principle and the lack of obligations. Overall, this study points out the importance of the delegation dimension in regionalization and encourages the interventionist approach concerning global environmental protection.

Design Trade-Offs Under Power Asymmetry: COPs and Flexibility Clauses

Negotiating parties to an environmental agreement can manage uncertainty by including flexibility clauses, such as escape and withdrawal clauses. This article investigates a type of uncertainty so far overlooked by the literature: the uncertainty generated by the creation of a Conference of the Parties (COP) in a context of sharp power asymmetry. When negotiating an agreement, it is difficult for powerful states to make a credible commitment to weaker states, whereby they will not abuse their power to influence future COP decision-making. Flexibility clauses provide a solution to this credibility issue. They act as an insurance mechanism in case a powerful state hijacks the COP. Thus we expect that the creation of a collective body interacts with the degree of power asymmetry to make flexibility clauses more likely in environmental agreements. To test this argument, we draw on an original data set of several specific clauses in 2,090 environmental agreements, signed between 1945 and 2018. The results support our hypothesis and suggest that flexibility clauses are an important design feature of adaptive environmental agreements.

Free Trade, Autarky And The Sustainability Of An International Environmental Agreement

We determine the impact of free trade on the sustainability of an international environmental agreement (IEA) and incorporate it into the assessment of the net benefits of opening up to free trade. We show that such an analysis can reverse the conclusions reached within a standard one-shot game framework. First, we examine a one shot game and argue that the benefits from an increase in economic activity due to free trade outweigh the extra cost of free trade associated with larger environmental damage. Then, we analyze the infinite repetition of the one-shot game where countries can use trigger strategies and show that there exist circumstances where an IEA is sustainable under autarky but not under free trade. This aggravates the environmental damages caused by free trade and leads to the possibility that autarky may welfare dominate free trade. This conclusion remains valid even when countries adopt the most cooperative environmental policy when the "fully cooperative" environmental policy is not sustainable.

Free Trade, Autarky And The Sustainability Of An International Environmental Agreement

We determine the impact of free trade on the sustainability of an international environmental agreement (IEA) and incorporate it into the assessment of the net benefits of opening up to free trade. We show that such an analysis can reverse the conclusions reached within a standard one-shot game framework. First, we examine a one shot game and argue that the benefits from an increase in economic activity due to free trade outweigh the extra cost of free trade associated with larger environmental damage. Then, we analyze the infinite repetition of the one-shot game where countries can use trigger strategies and show that there exist circumstances where an IEA is sustainable under autarky but not under free trade. This aggravates the environmental damages caused by free trade and leads to the possibility that autarky may welfare dominate free trade. This conclusion remains valid even when countries adopt the most cooperative environmental policy when the "fully cooperative" environmental policy is not sustainable.

The landmark Escazú Agreement: An opportunity to integrate democracy, human rights, and transboundary conservation

Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) is one of the world’s most biodiverse regions, but this diversity is threatened by the overexploitation of natural resources and internal social conflicts. In 2018, 33 LAC countries were invited to sign and ratify the landmark Escazú Agreement, which is the first legally binding environmental agreement to explicitly integrate human rights. The agreement outlines an approach to enhance the protection of environmental defenders, increase public participation in environmental decision-making, and foster cooperation among countries for biodiversity conservation. However, clear mechanisms to implement the ideals of the Agreement are currently lacking. We identify the key provisions of the Agreement and link these to tangible mechanisms which aim to integrate human rights and nature conservation. These mechanisms include technological (e.g. free online data), human-based (e.g. legal advice from multidisciplinary teams), and nature-based solutions (e.g. transboundary species management). As environmental assets – and threats to them – span national boundaries, the collaborative and participatory provisions of the agreement could catalyse coordinated transboundary environmental management. We call for the remaining 12 countries to ratify the Escazú Agreement to ensure the ideals of collaborative, just, and transparent environmental management are established across the entire LAC region.