ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the institutions created to address three major problems of the atmospheric commons. Transboundary acid rain has been the focus of regional institutions, most prominently the convention on long-range transboundary air pollution, focusing on Europe and coordinated through the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, although regional institutions are emerging in other areas. The process created by the Vienna Convention and Montreal Protocol govern one of the effective efforts at international environmental cooperation, addressing the protection of the ozone layer. Climate change has proven to be a difficult institutional challenge, initially coordinated globally via the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and its Kyoto Protocol, but also via a number of informal or non-governmental institutional processes, and most recently through a new agreement negotiated in Paris. New approaches to persuade reluctant states to design, and commit to, their own climate targets, will serve as a model for new institutional formats for addressing issues of the global commons.
