A Study On The Compliance Regime Of Multilateral Environmental Agreements: From The Perspective Of Non-Compliance Procedure

In the20th century, the Industry Revolution accelerated the development ofeconomic and culture. However, at the same time, the catastrophe of seriouspollution and over-exploitation of natural resources caused a series of environmentalaccidents. In order to solve this problem, the world has concluded a bunch ofmultilateral environmental treaties involving many fields of environment protection.Because the multilateral environmental treaty obligations are closely related toeconomic interests, state parties often fail to perform these obligations, making it hardfor multilateral environmental treaties to ease international environmental problems.As international environmental problems are integral, latent and irreversible,traditional ways of dispute resolution in international law are difficult to actuallysolve the problems. It is hard to determine the injuring party and the injured party inthe state responsibility system, let alone to sentence the compensation. Internationaljudiciary and arbitration can only deal with the accidents ex post facto but can notprevent them in advance. Besides, retaliation or retortion conflicts with the purpose ofthe global environmental protection.Non-compliance procedure is built up during the Fourth Meeting of the Partiesof Montreal Protocol. Starting a new approach of dispute resolution, non-complianceprocedure came into force through three periods: before the Protocol becameeffective in1987; before the draft of non-compliance procedure was passed in1990;before the procedure formally became valid in1992. Institutions of the MontrealProtocol include Meeting of the Parties, the Secretariat, Multilateral Fund and theImplementation Committee whose responsibility is to manage and supervise theimplementation of the state parties. Non-compliance procedure can be initiated inthree ways: by other state parties, by the Secretariat and by the concerned state partyitself. With the proposal of the Implementation Committee, the Meeting of the Partiesmay identify if the state party concerned is complying with its obligations under theProtocol and take proper measures, which include offering advise and assistance, allocating funds, demanding plans and reports, warning and suspending relevantrights and privileges.Compliance with the obligations is a criterion of the effectiveness of themultilateral environmental agreements. In this paper, theories of internationalrelations are borrowed to analysis why or why not states observe the commitmentsthey made. Recognizing that benefits may drive states to comply with the treaties, it isbetter to stimulate states to comply with an incentive mechanism and graduallyforming the routine of good compliance. On the issue of the protection of the ozonelayer, non-compliance procedure proved to be a success and it may apply in a widerrange of other fields of environment protection.Along with the world entering into a new era of low-carbon economy, it iswidely accepted that every state shall make efforts to gain ecological commonwealthwhen developing economics. China should grab this opportunity of internationalcooperation of environment protection and take an active part in the work of buildingand improving the compliance mechanism of multilateral environmental agreements.To strengthen the ability to comply with the obligations under the multilateralenvironmental agreements, China shall develop the programs and plans ofcompliance, adapt multilateral environmental agreement obligations into domesticlegislation and build up a system of supervising institutions.