Enforcement and Sanctions

This chapter considers the contribution made by international legal principles and treaty initiatives intended to enhance statal compliance with international environmental law (IEL) including its general principles. Particular attention is paid to the role played by the relatively recent innovation of collective systems instituted within several multilateral environmental agreement (MEA) regimes to address non-compliance. Following the introduction, the chapter spans two main sections. Section 2 places IEL enforcement into a broader political context, with reference to the problematic state of MEA implementation and the international community’s general reaction. Section 3 explores the existing range of procedural mechanisms and obligations established in IEL that have been developed in order to address scenarios of non-compliance with international environmental obligations, taking into consideration the impact of traditional inter-statal dispute resolution principles and mechanisms before focusing on more recent innovative systems of collective compliance review in MEAs. The chapter closes with some brief reflections on the role of enforcement and sanctions in IEL.