Negotiating and implementing multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) : a manual for NGOs

Abstract

The decade and-a-half since the 1992 Earth Summit has seen a vast expansion in the number and scope of Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs). There are now more than 700 environmental conventions, charters, agreements, accords, protocols and treaties in force, from global to regional to bilaterallyapplicable agreements. They cover areas as narrowly-focused as the Biosafety Protocol in the Convention on Biological Diversity and as widely encompassing as the recently activated Kyoto Protocol of the Framework Convention on Climate Change. And there are still dozens of conferences, commissions, and ad hoc expert groups negotiating additional agreements, often on intensely complex intersectoral issue areas.