ABSTRACT

The Kyoto Protocol of the climate change regime has for instance given rise to the most comprehensive non-compliance procedure to date. The lack of implementation comes from various factors, including the softness of international obligations in the environmental field or the specificities of environmental harm. The non-compliance procedure of an environmental treaty was drawn up in 1990 in the framework of the Montreal Protocol of the ozone regime. The non-compliance mechanism of the Aarhus Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters provides another remarkable example because of the powers the public is granted under the Compliance Committee’s procedure. In most cases, a compliance committee is established by the Conference of Parties, which specifies its composition, mandate, decision-making powers, rules of procedure, and its relationship to other bodies. Most of these committees are designed to prevent non-compliance and facilitate compliance.