Promoting Compliance in an Evolving Climate Regime by Jutta Brunnée & Meinhard Doelle & Lavanya Rajamani

Author:Jutta Brunnée & Meinhard Doelle & Lavanya Rajamani
Language: eng
Format: mobi, pdf
Tags: Law, Environmental & Natural Resources Law
ISBN: 9780511979286
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2012-01-04T18:30:00+00:00

Cambridge Books Online

http://ebooks.cambridge.org/

Promoting Compliance in an Evolving Climate Regime

Edited by Jutta Brunnée, Meinhard Doelle, Lavanya Rajamani

Book DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511979286

Online ISBN: 9780511979286

Hardback ISBN: 9780521199483

Paperback ISBN: 9780521136136

Chapter

12 - Compliance and the use of trade measures pp. 262-285

Chapter DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511979286.017

Cambridge University Press

12

Compliance and the use of trade measures

Jacob Werksman

1. Introduction

h

e Cancun Agreements, adopted by the sixteenth Conference of the

Parties (COP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change

(FCCC) were initially welcomed as restoring faith in multilateralism. 1

COP-16 is, however, more likely to be remembered as introducing a new

form of multilateralism to climate policy, by marking the end of the Kyoto

Protocol’s (KP) approach of internationally agreed, legally binding tar-

gets overseen by a global compliance mechanism.

h

e post-2012 climate regime promises, across a number of dimensions,

to be far more ‘bottom-up’ in its construction. h

e developed country tar-

gets and the developing country nationally appropriate mitigation actions

(NAMAs) that are at the core of the Cancun Agreements have been put

forward by each party unilaterally, using only minimal agreed standards.

As is described elsewhere in this volume, these undertakings, most fre-

quently characterized as ‘pledges’, are not yet internationally legally bind-

ing, and the international processes parties have agreed for measuring,

reporting, and verifying each other’s performance against these pledges

do not, as of yet, lead to any binding consequences for non-compliance.

Cancun’s more bottom-up approach has been driven, in part, by the

refusal, since the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol, of the United States

(US) to undertake any internationally legally binding greenhouse gas

(GHG) targets without i rst securing the passage of domestic legislation

necessary to achieve those targets. h

e US has also insisted that any new

1 B. Blomme, ‘HOPE in Cancun: Big Leap for Multilateralism, Small Step for the Climate’,

Greenpeace Blog , 11 December 2010, at www.greenpeace.org/canada/en/Blog/hope-in-

cancun-big-leap-for-multilateralism-s/blog/30923 ; S. Goldenberg, ‘Cancún Agreement

Rescues UN Credibility But Falls Short of Saving Planet’, Guardian.co.uk (12 December

2010), at www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/dec/12/cancun-agreement-rescues-

un-credibility ; and T. Roberts, ‘h

e Patient is Alive: A Turning Point for Multilateralism

at Cancun?’, Intercambio Climatico , at www.intercambioclimatico.com/en/2010/12/14/

the-patient-is-alive-a-turning-point-for-multilateralism-at-cancun .

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Compliance and the Use of Trade Measures

263

internationally legally binding agreement must include commitments by

major emerging economies (or ‘ BASIC’ countries 2 ) that are ‘comparable’

to US commitments. h

e BASIC countries support a new, legally binding

treaty, but they would like that treaty to replicate the design of the KP’s

i rst commitment period, in which only developed countries undertook

specii c, time-bound, and legally binding targets. 3

Public concern about global warming, despite the stand-of over the con-

tent and legal form of a future climate change regime, has led towards more

dramatic developments at the national, than at the international, level. In the

years since the KP was adopted, climate-change-related policies have been

developing apace in many countries – particularly in the European Union

(EU), but also in the US and BASIC countries. h

e focus of these domestic

processes has been less on the need for global collective action to combat

global warming and more on securing the long-term benei ts and compen-

sating for the near-term costs of a transition to a low-carbon economy.

h

ese

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