Abstract
Multilateral Environmental Agreements—MEAs—are indispensable legal frameworks for environmental sustainability and also define the operating rules of their implementation bodies (“Secretariats”). The contribution assesses in how far the norms defining Secretariats’ functions differ and also reflect on actual functions for three MEAs, namely (1) the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora-CITES (1973), (2) the Convention on Biological Diversity—CBD (1992), and (3) the Convention on Migratory Species—CMS (1979). It does so by comparative legal interpretation of the main norms of these MEAs laying down the functions of its respective Secretariats as well as an in-depth review of academic literature about these functions. The results for these three conventions divide into nine functional areas and show an unexpectedly wide range of different functions laid down in the conventions as well as extensive variety in the discretion for many of these functional areas. Some potential explanations of these formal differences are provided. The paper further finds that actually executed functions may not be fully covered by the underlying legal norms but rather by “flexible” highest governing bodies of MEAs and concludes that occasionally an unusual legislative style was chosen, and shows potential solutions and future research directions.
Highlights
The wide range of understandings of governance has been already demonstrated and its context alongside environment and sustainable development is widely recognized [2,3,4,5]
IX/4/h CMS) could be more related to other types of function and have been already described above) which is the instruction to promote the conclusion of AGREEMENTS; the therein enshrined wide discretion of the Secretariat regarding means, space and time is in the same norm restricted, because it is put under the direction of the COP
From the three conventions assessed it can be demonstrated that more and concrete secretariat functions correlate with a higher qualitative extent of convention obligations for Parties to be dealt with by secretariats with higher active requirements
Summary
The wide range of understandings of governance has been already demonstrated (see e.g., [1]) and its context alongside environment and sustainable development is widely recognized [2,3,4,5]. Similar is valid for the—under their aegis adopted and administered—Multilateral Environmental Agreements—MEAs [11,12,13] When it comes to biodiversity, these relevant institutions are in particular:. While the organizations overall administer these institutions which were concluded under their aegis, the concrete administrative units are usually laid down in the institutions and, created by these institutions They are usually called “secretariats” and these MEA-secretariats are widely seen as significant players in this global environmental governance [34,35,36]. Their scope of work is in particular determined by the conventions themselves. The grade of detailedness of these documents and the extent to which they are formulated in a binding way circumscribe the frame of freedom and discretion for the work of these secretariats
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