Abstract
Illegal trade in chemicals and waste has brought severe negative impacts to human health and the environment. Fragmentation of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) has challenged implementation due to disconnects and inconsistencies between regimes that causes inefficiencies, overlapping norms, and duplication. Since the late 1990s, there have been proposals to cluster MEAs organizationally and functionally to create synergies between them. This paper evaluates whether the proposition on clustering of MEAs has worked in practice through an empirical case study of the “MEA Regional Enforcement Network (REN)”. MEA REN sought to cluster at the organizational and functional elements of the Basel Convention, the Rotterdam Convention, the Stockholm Convention, and the Montreal Protocol in South and Southeast Asia. Regarding organizational clustering, through co-organizing regional network meetings cross-MEA learning was enhanced and costs were saved, but co-locating regional offices proved more challenging. For the clustering of functional elements, MEA enforcement was ultimately strengthened through several joint initiatives across MEAs. However, not all functions could be clustered as anticipated, including data reporting due to incompatibility between the conventions and overall workloads. The paper concludes with recommendations for future environmental enforcement.
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Notes
UNEP stopped the practice since 2014 due to the change of management–personal preference.
There is no data for 2011.
There are many factors related to enforcement and compliance of MEAs. Gareau (2008) argued, for example, that the Montreal Protocol has been undermined by US protectionism, and that powerful states protect conditions of production while enforcing the deregulation or reregulation of international markets. Definitions of hazardousness may also be steered by industrialized countries to protect or advance economic interests (Lucier and Gareau 2016).
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Acknowledgement
We would like to express our gratitude to Professor Lorraine Elliott from Australian National University, Dr. Wanhua Yang from UNEP, Dr. Vira Somboon, Professor Surichai Wun’gaeo, Dr. Charit Tingsabadh, and Dr. Sangchan Limjirakan from Chulalongkorn University, and Dr. Pattanan Tarin from Thailand’ Pollution Control Department for their support towards this research. We also thank the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive suggestions.
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Liu, N., Middleton, C. Regional clustering of chemicals and waste multilateral environmental agreements to improve enforcement. Int Environ Agreements 17, 899–919 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10784-017-9372-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10784-017-9372-y