As the contours of a post-2012 climate regime begin to emerge, compliance issues will require increasing attention. This volume considers the questions that the trends in the climate negotiations raise for the regime's compliance system. It reviews the main features of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and its Kyoto Protocol, canvasses the literature on compliance theory and examines the broader experience with compliance mechanisms in other international environmental regimes. Against this backdrop, contributors examine the central elements of the existing compliance system, the practice of the Kyoto compliance procedure to date and the main compliance challenges encountered by key groups of states such as OECD countries, economies in transition and developing countries. These assessments anchor examinations of the strengths and weaknesses of the existing compliance tools and of the emerging, decentralized, 'bottom-up' approach introduced by the 2009 Copenhagen Accord and
As the contours of a post-2012 climate regime begin to emerge, compliance issues will require increasing attention. This volume considers the questions that the trends in the climate negotiations raise for the regime's compliance system. It reviews the main features of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and its Kyoto Protocol, canvasses the literature on compliance theory and examines the broader experience with compliance mechanisms in other international environmental regimes. Against this backdrop, contributors examine the central elements of the existing compliance system, the practice of the Kyoto compliance procedure to date and the main compliance challenges encountered by key groups of states such as OECD countries, economies in transition and developing countries. These assessments anchor examinations of the strengths and weaknesses of the existing compliance tools and of the emerging, decentralized, 'bottom-up' approach introduced by the 2009 Copenhagen Accord and
It has never been more important to understand how international law enables and constrains international politics. By drawing together the legal theory of Lon Fuller and the insights of constructivist international relations scholars, this book articulates a pragmatic view of how international obligation is created and maintained. First, legal norms can only arise in the context of social norms based on shared understandings. Second, internal features of law, or 'criteria of legality', are crucial to law's ability to promote adherence, to inspire 'fidelity'. Third, legal norms are built, maintained or destroyed through a continuing practice of legality. Through case studies of the climate change regime, the anti-torture norm, and the prohibition on the use of force, it is shown that these three elements produce a distinctive legal legitimacy and a sense of commitment among those to whom law is addressed.
It has never been more important to understand how international law enables and constrains international politics. By drawing together the legal theory of Lon Fuller and the insights of constructivist international relations scholars, this book articulates a pragmatic view of how international obligation is created and maintained. First, legal norms can only arise in the context of social norms based on shared understandings. Second, internal features of law, or 'criteria of legality', are crucial to law's ability to promote adherence, to inspire 'fidelity'. Third, legal norms are built, maintained or destroyed through a continuing practice of legality. Through case studies of the climate change regime, the anti-torture norm, and the prohibition on the use of force, it is shown that these three elements produce a distinctive legal legitimacy and a sense of commitment among those to whom law is addressed.