ABSTRACT
As the number of international environmental agreements has increased significantly over time since the early 1970s, the international community has recognised the importance of the need to ensure and develop procedures to promote and review their full and timely implementation. However, the overall track record regarding multilateral environmental agreement (MEA) implementation across the international community of states has been less than impressive. The phenomenon of 'treaty congestion' has been criticised, namely a situation characterised by a proliferation of international agreements concerned with particular shared environmental problems but hampered by often poor delivery on treaty commitments and a lack of co-ordination between them. A number of MEA regimes have noted that many contracting parties fail to honour their treaty obligations, notably with regard to the provision of national reports containing information pertinent for the purposes of assisting review on their implementation performance.
