International Treaty Negotiations Research Articles

Negotiating regime complexity: Following a regime complex in the making

AbstractThis article broadens the understanding and empirical study of regime complexes by shifting the focus from the negotiation outcome to the processes of negotiating new international agreements. Although they are important to regime-complex formation and delimitation, the sites where states negotiate new agreements are rather neglected. We aim to enhance the methodological toolbox available to scholars studying global governance in two ways: (1) by demonstrating how dynamic relationships between states and international organisations (IOs) unfolding within the social space of international treaty negotiations contribute to regime-complex formation; and (2) how social network analysis (SNA) can help us to detect patterns in these relationships. Combining participant observation and collaborative event ethnography (CEE) with social network analysis, we present new empirical material illustrating how we delimited a regime complex and how IOs interact throughout the negotiation process. We applied our methodology to the case of marine-biodiversity governance and use observational data collected during three intergovernmental conferences (IGCs) (2018–19) on a new treaty for the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction (BBNJ) for our analysis. We discuss the results in relation to our approach’s strengths and weaknesses and implications for future research on regime complexity.

Disabled People’s Fight for Rights in South Korea and Japan

Long considered objects of pity and welfare assistance, people with disabilities in South Korea and Japan are increasingly treated as rights-bearers. Through activism, litigation, and involvement in international treaty negotiations, Koreans and Japanese with disabilities spurred reforms that created new anti-discrimination protections and obligations to provide reasonable accommodations, access, employment, and social supports. These policy changes also signal a notably more legalistic approach to governance, particularly in South Korea, because they include more detailed rules and formal rights, more enforcement mechanisms like fines, and better recourse to judicial or other dispute resolution bodies.

Navigating the spaces between human rights and justice: cultivating Indigenous representation in global environmental governance

ABSTRACT How and in what ways do ‘marginalized' actors influence global environmental governance? Through a collaborative event ethnography of the Paris Climate Summit (COP21), we examine power as it emerges through interactions between actors, institutions, and spaces, focusing on Indigenous Peoples’ engagement at the international treaty negotiations. The findings show how Indigenous Peoples generate new meanings and avenues for their pursuits of justice by contesting the production of various forms of rights. In doing so, Indigenous delegates situate power through the politics of representation, carving out distinct political roles in international arenas.

The Genesis of Article 234 of the UNCLOS

Article 234 is exceptional regarding its wording and placement in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), as well as in its historical background. The Arctic provision has given rise to divergent interpretations regarding the conditions for invoking it, the limitations on the authority under Article 234, and its spatial scope of application. It has served as a justification for specific legislation adopted by Canada and Russia that has been opposed by the United States. The article, describes as a “textbook example of finding a compromise in international treaty negotiations,” was negotiated directly and privately, among these three states during the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS III). This article describes the historical background to Article 234 and sheds new light on the negotiating process that led to the adoption of the provision.

Treaty framing and climate science: challenges in managing the risk of global warming

In this article we confront the yawning gap between necessary GHG emission reduction targets set by climate scientists and the results of decades-long international treaty negotiations and meetings. We find that, 30 years after the treaty process commenced, this gap is still growing. The treaty process first tried a top-down approach, in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, and later a bottom-up one, in the 2015 Paris Agreement, but so far the later results have proved no better than the earlier ones. We suggest, therefore, that a different approach should be implemented. We propose that the advanced economies should begin, as soon as possible, subsidising a massive program to promote decarbonisation in the still developing economies by providing free of charge, a very extensive array of non-fossil-fuel technologies and facilities. At the end of this article we refer to a specific framework within which this mission could be carried out.

Diplomatic Dynamics of International Treaty Negotiations

The negotiation process of international treaties is heavily influenced by socioeconomic factors. In this paper, we aim to answer the question of how to quantify the influential factors among countries. We do so by categorizing them into different interest groups based on their attitudes towards the treaty as well as their socioeconomic statuses and modeling the movement of countries between these interest groups. This model is based on an epidemiological approach to quantifying influence. Through our research, we discovered two equilibrium points, which reveal the conditions under which all countries would either support or oppose a treaty. We also ran simulations under several hypothetical scenarios under which equilibria would occur, demonstrating the practical applications of our model. We further analyze the model's real life application and the influence of certain parameters through two case studies: the first is on the Basel Convention's negotiation process and the second is on the spread of carbon pricing.

Between Signing and Ratifying: Preratification Politics, the Disability Convention, and the Dutch

The ever-increasing scholarship on the politics of human rights focuses on either international treaty negotiations or domestic politics after ratification. It thus misses how the stage of implementation is often crucially set in the period between signing and ratifying. This article addresses this lacuna via an in-depth discussion of the ratification process of the Disability Convention (CRPD) in the Netherlands. In this period, stakeholders highlight certain treaty obligations, while downplaying or ignoring others. This theory of preratification politics calls for more differentiation between treaty obligations and attention to the politics of their mobilization, even in the most monist countries.

Between Signing and Ratifying: Preratification Politics, the Disability Convention, and the Dutch

The ever-increasing scholarship on the politics of human rights focuses on either international treaty negotiations or domestic politics after ratification. It thus misses how the stage of implementation is often crucially set in the period between signing and ratifying. This article addresses this lacuna via an in-depth discussion of the ratification process of the Disability Convention (CRPD) in the Netherlands. In this period, stakeholders highlight certain treaty obligations, while downplaying or ignoring others. This theory of preratification politics calls for more differentiation between treaty obligations and attention to the politics of their mobilization, even in the most monist countries.

A Universal Human Right to Shape Responses to a Global Problem? The Role of Self‐Determination in Guiding the International Legal Response to Climate Change

International climate change law is at a critical juncture. Two decades of international treaty negotiations have delivered rising greenhouse gas emissions and minimal adaptation funding. The pattern of negotiations suggests that key States will often only make significant commitments that are aligned with their material interests and reciprocated by their competitors. This ‘logic of reciprocity’ in international climate negotiations has limited ambition such that vulnerable States are facing existential threats from sea level rise, storm surge and salt‐water inundation. We consider whether the international legal system offers any alternative logics that might found a duty on emitters to reduce their emissions in a timelier fashion and respond to climate‐change‐induced forced migration. We therefore focus on the foundational principle of the self‐determination of peoples, a collective human right which has supported movements towards decolonization and the emancipation of oppressed peoples. We argue that self‐determination might offer an alternative logic of duty on high‐emitting States to the plight of populations who find their territory (and potentially their nationhood) under threat from anthropogenic climate change.

Thinking Clearly About Multistakeholder Internet Governance

Efforts to study and practice Internet governance start, virtually without exception, from the premise that the Internet is governed by an innovative, unusual (perhaps unique) ‘multistakeholder’ model. Preserving that model is a primary goal for the broader Internet community as well as for many governments, though not for all. Viewing multistakeholderism as a teleological goal for Internet governance creates several problems. First, multistakeholderism is often elevated as a value in itself rather than as a possible approach to meeting more salient public interest objectives such as preserving Internet interoperability, stability, security, and openness. Second, multistakeholder governance may not be appropriate in every functional area of Internet governance. Internet coordination is not a monolithic practice but rather a multilayered series of tasks of which some are appropriately relegated to the private sector, some the purview of traditional nation-state governance or international treaty negotiations, and some more appropriately multistakeholder. It is a misnomer to speak not only of multistakeholder governance but also of Internet governance as a single thing. The concept of multistakeholderism can also serve as a proxy for broader political struggles or be deployed as an impediment to the types of Internet coordination necessary to promote conditions of responsible governance. For example, governments with repressive information policies can advocate for top-down and formalized multistakeholderism to gain additional power in areas in which they have traditionally not had jurisdiction. These types of efforts can result in multilateral rather than multistakeholder approaches with non-governmental actors limited from participating in formal deliberations and lacking any meaningful voting power. Alternatively, companies and other actors with vested interests in current governance arrangements can deploy multistakeholderism in a manner either meant to exclude new entrants (whether public or private) with incommensurate interests and values or to preserve incumbent market advantage.This paper suggests that multistakeholderism should not be viewed as a value in itself applied homogenously to all Internet governance functions. Rather, the appropriate approach to responsible Internet governance requires determining what types of administration are optimal for promoting a balance of interoperability, innovation, free expression and operational stability in any particular functional and political context. Doing so requires conceptual and theoretical tools that have not yet been developed. Accordingly, the paper proceeds in three parts. First, it presents a more granular taxonomy and understanding of Internet governance functions – differentiating between, for example, cybersecurity governance, Internet standards setting, and the policymaking function of private information intermediaries. Second, it performs the same task of disaggregation with respect to multistakeholderism. It presents distinct varieties of multistakeholder Internet governance (which differ according to the varieties of actors involved and the nature of authority relations between them) and sets these arrangements in a broader context of modalities for accomplishing global governance in other issue areas. Such an approach contributes both to the study and practice of Internet governance, and to scholarship in International Relations and global governance.

Comparing Canadian and Colombian Approaches to the Duty to Consult Indigenous Communities on International Treaties

In recent years, the development in Canada of a constitutional duty to consult Indigenous communities has had ramifications on government decision-making that are widespread, far-reaching, and potentially expansive. The modern duty to consult doctrine developed in a series of cases in 2004-2005, ensuring that governments have a duty to consult proactively with Aboriginal communities whose Aboriginal or treaty rights may be adversely impacted by a particular administrative decision, even in the face of uncertainty about the scope of asserted rights in the absence of a final settlement or court decision. Case law development on the duty later established that the duty is also triggered in the context of an early, strategic decision that may determine later administrative decisions. Some have put forth the argument that the duty may be triggered prior to the adoption of legislation; adjudication on that issue is currently making its way forwardthrough the courts. The Hupacasath First Nation case, recently decided at the Federal Court of Appeal, raised another question, that of whether or not consultation was owed to Aboriginal communities in the context of international treaty negotiations. Although the federal government has actually engaged in such consultation in some instances so as to avoid infringing Aboriginal and treaty rights, the case raised the complex question of whether it is constitutionally required to do so in order to comply with the duty to consult doctrine. On the particular facts of the case, the issue concerned the Canada-China foreign investment treaty, which the Hupacasath First Nation argued was apt to lead to later infringements on Aboriginal rights. Both the Federal Court and the Federal Court of Appeal rejected these arguments. Their rejection has broader implications, but we shall argue that it leaves open the possibility that the negotiation of some internationaltreaties may trigger the constitutional duty to consult, thus opening a complex nexus between constitutional and international law.

All Policies Are Glocal: International Environmental Policy Making with Strategic Subnational Governments

National governments have intensified their attempts to create international institutions in various policy fields such as the environment, finance and trade. At the same time, many subnational policy makers have begun to duplicate international efforts by setting their own, stricter policies while others remain inactive or enact more lax regulation. This ‘glocalization’ of policy creates a complex and potentially costly patchwork system of regulations. To shed light on this phenomenon, this article analyzes the interaction between subnational and national governments within a game-theoretic model of international treaty negotiations. The glocalization of regulatory policy can be understood as an attempt by subnational policy makers to strategically constrain or empower national governments in international negotiations. The study finds that the shadow of international treaty formation gives rise to within-country and cross-country policy balancing dynamics that may explain some of the subnational policy polarization that is currently observable in many countries. The article specifies the conditions under which these dynamics occur, spells out empirically testable hypotheses and identifies possible theoretical extensions.

Picking Treaties, Picking Winners

International treaty negotiations and domestic politics are interrelated. We show that negotiators can strategically select treaties to mobilize domestic interest groups and support particular candidates for office. Interest groups will support (oppose) political parties that will ratify treaties benefiting (harming) them. By designing treaties that mobilize these “swing” groups, negotiators can affect different parties’ chances of assuming power. Our model produces specific predictions for treaty design, contingent on the preferences of negotiators, parties, and interest groups. With conservative and moderate interest groups, the results may be counterintuitive—for instance, foreign governments pushing liberal treaties on liberal incumbents they dislike, intentionally mobilizing interest groups against the treaty and in favor of conservative challengers. Highly competitive systems, particularly those where moderate interest groups’ support is in play, give treaty negotiators leeway to shape political outcomes. Powerful interest groups may exert strong influence or no influence, depending on the cost of appeasing them and whether domestic and foreign negotiators are willing to gamble the incumbent’s political future for the achievement of their policy ideals.

Global environmental regulation: Current status of carbon markets and carbon credits

AbstractClimate change is at the heart of political and legislative debates, international treaty negotiations, religious discussion, and daily media stories. Climate‐change legislation did not pass in the US Congress, but the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has issued greenhouse gas (GHG) regulations under a 2007 US Supreme Court decision based on the Federal Clean Air Act. Thus, national GHG regulation is going forward in the United States, to the surprise of many who are not involved in environmental issues or regulated under the EPA program.

Toward an Understanding of State Behavior in Prolonged International Negotiations

Abstract Many of the most significant international treaty negotiations take years, and sometimes decades, to conclude. The international climate negotiations, trade negotiations, and law of the sea negotiations are all examples. Yet, notwithstanding their common occurrence and importance, prolonged international negotiations are not well understood. In these negotiations, state preferences are not fixed, but fluid, as negotiating positions change. This temporal dimension of prolonged negotiations is insufficiently captured by existing theories of international negotiations, which, by virtue of their focus on individual negotiation outcomes at one point in time, tend to be static in their analysis. This article combines an analysis of existing theories of international negotiations with the findings of an empirical study of the climate change negotiations. It reveals a series of internal and external factors distinct to prolonged international negotiations, emphasizes the importance of the temporal dimension, and explains how and why the negotiating positions and the type of agreements states are prepared to sign change over time. Building on these variables, state behavior in prolonged international negotiations can be usefully conceived of as (at different points in time) either an immature or mature game, in which strategic opportunities arise at different phases of the game for networked actors to constructively influence state behavior. Eight strategies are suggested that traditionally weak actors can employ to steer prolonged international negotiations toward their preferred outcome.

All Policies are Glocal: International Enviromental Policymaking with Strategic Subnational Governments

National governments have intensified their attempts to create international institutions in various policy fields such as environment, finance, and trade. At the same time, many subnational policymakers have begun to duplicate international efforts by setting their own, stricter policies while others remain inactive or enact more lax regulation. This of policy creates a complex and economically costly patchwork system of regulations. To shed light on this phenomenon we analyze the interaction between subnational and national governments within a general model of international treaty negotiations. The glocalization of regulatory policy can be understood as an attempt by subnational policymakers to strategically constrain or empower national governments in international negotiations. We find that the shadow of international treaty formation gives rise to within-country and cross-country policy balancing dynamics that may explain some of the subnational policy polarization currently observable in many countries. We specify the conditions under which they occur, spell out empirically testable hypotheses, and identify possible theoretical extensions.

An Overview of the Mexico-Brazil Strategic Agreement for Economic Integration

In a globalized world, the negotiation of international treaties and agreements by two or more countries is more and more common. The exchange of goods, services, technology, and manufactures and the development of continental platforms for the regional distribution of products are some of the reasons countries pursue Agreements for preferential access to important markets. Some economies require a greater number of trade negotiations with various countries to increase market penetration and complement their productive sectors. This is the case of one of the trade partners of the United States of America, Mexico. Mexico started this globalization effort precisely with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) negotiations. The governments of the three countries (Mexico, the United States, and Canada) found and encompassed in such Agreement the rules of the game to have preferential access to their markets, abiding by the provisions of the World Trade Organization (WTO) through its Marrakech Agreement and, certainly, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) structure. In spite of the variety of problems generated in the member countries after the implementation of NAFTA, the benefits for the three countries have been evident. Specifically with respect to Mexico, exports increased dramatically, a productive force was created through export promotion programs, investment sectors previously closed were opened, productive and consumer sectors were complemented, etc. There may be certain areas where all expectations are not yet fulfilled, such as technology exchange. However, through the “maquila” or in-bond industry, Mexico has received technology but only to meet the manufacturing need of its productive processes. Most of the time, this technology is owned by the foreign companies in charge of the maquila activities in Mexico and remains only for a limited time in the country. Such technologies are not transferred with the purpose of being used in the development of new technology, so this is one of the goals that have not yet been achieved. The above is a good example of the need–mainly in developing countries–to complement free trade agreements with other similar agreements with different countries, offering mutual benefits and assuming shared responsibilities.

Access to Medicines, Article 30 of TRIPS in the Doha Declaration and an Anthropological Critique of International Treaty Negotiations

Para 6 of the Doha Declaration became an important issue because its solution as suggested by various countries in the form of draft proposals was perceived as changing the basic features of the TRIPS Agreement. Once the USA along with its allies the EC, Japan and Switzerland did not agree with developing countries proposals to permit export of patented products under Article 30 of TRIPS to the countries without any capacity or insufficient capacity to manufacture the patented product, the stage was set for a long and arduous negotiation. Developed countries introduced Article 31 solution with an extensive introduction of regulations under the pretext that the existing enforcement measures under the TRIPS Agreement addresses the possibility of patent infringement and not the trade diversion. The reasoning given appears to be incorrect and wrongly raised particularly when the EC had specifically raised this issue of diversion in case of WTO Dispute in Canada-Patent Protection and the Panel had observed as per Canadian argument that any diversion of patented products is the responsibility of patent holder through private infringement action. It appears that what the EC couldn't get through the Panel in Canada Patent Protection dispute, it is trying to get it through Para 6 of the Doha Declaration negotiations. The proposals from both the EC and the USA and repeated by Frederick Abbott asserting that the authoritative interpretation do not have legal certainty till it is decided by the Appellate Body has been decided by the Appellate Body in Japan-Alcoholic Dispute where the Appellate Body observed that the decisions of the Panel and the Appellate Body is binding only on the parties concerned and only by the authoritative interpretations of the Ministerial Conference, an interpretations can be made binding on the WTO Members as a whole. The incapacity or insufficient capacity of the countries to manufacture the patented product raises two other important issues, that of enablement and local working. If the patented product cannot be manufactured because of lack of wherewithals or lack of technically qualified personnel, no patent can be granted for such product. The other issue is that of local working where if the patent is not worked during the specified period i.e. if the patented product has not been manufactured by the patent holder in the territory of the patent, a compulsory license can be granted without payment of any remuneration at all as per Article 5A(2) of the Paris Convention as incorporated in the TRIPS Agreement. All the proposals for the para 6 solutions of the Doha Declaration were combined together for discussion. However, the TRIPS Council Chairman Perez Motta removed all the proposals coming from developing countries while incorporating the restriction on the scope of diseases as desired by the USA and the EC in repetition of the 1990-1991 TRIPS negotiations where in a similar fashion after all the proposals were combined together, Anell and then GATT Chairman Arthur Dunkel removed all the proposals coming from developing countries from the final TRIPS Agreement with Article 1.1 of TRIPS permitting unlimited increase in trade restrictions. The USA tried to put its seal of finality on Perez Motta's note by issuing another document, which it called Moratorium which says that if all the conditions prescribed by Perez Motta are accepted, then the USA would not take any action. The developments during the TRIPS Negotiations and the Para 6 Solution suggest that developing countries' participation in the international negotiations is neither genuine nor effective and the results can only be explained in terms of as a string of negatives-rejection, barriers, repression, denial and dissimulation. The developments leading to Perez Motta's Note and the US Moratorium reflect to a large extent legitimating political power and replacing the privilege of the law with the viewpoint of the objective of certain developed countries.

Para 6 Solution of the Doha Declaration, Article 30 of TRIPS and Non-Prohibition of Exports under the TRIPS Agreement

This is an analysis of the position of export in the TRIPS Agreement in terms of the provisions in various countries particularly in the USA and the EC because of its direct relevance to the solution of para 6 of the Doha Declaration. The analysis suggests that there was no loophole as insisted by the USA in the TRIPS Agreement regarding absence of provision of permitting export to the countries which do not have significant manufacturing capacities. The article starts from discussing that presence of Article 31(f) of TRIPS stipulating that manufacture under compulsory licensing is predominantly for domestic market cannot be read as affecting the whole of the TRIPS Agreement. The analysis of patent acts of various significant players in the field of intellectual property such as the US, the EC and Japan in terms of judicial decisions ranging from various judgments of the US Supreme Courts and other relevant courts apart from the TRIPS Agreement confirms that the is territorial which resolves into absence of any monopoly on export of patented products. The analysis also confirms that the related measures like and offer to sell are also not covered by the rights as mentioned in Article 28.1 of the TRIPS Agreement and different provision of different Western countries as exclusion of under monopoly has never been regarded as absolute or total. The monopoly on has always been interpreted as making for commercial purpose in the territory of the patent. While discussing the prior art under section 102(a) of the US Patent Act, Federal Circuit refused to invalidate patent on Ricoseal that the circulation of this product to different parties would not constitute prior art as it was not circulated for commercial purposes. Apart from the judgment of the US Supreme Court, the presence of exclusion rights covering export in UPOV and the introduction of 271(f) in the US Patent Act to prevent the export of components to be assembled where the total product would violate the US Patent act confirm that had there been a ban on export in the TRIPS Agreement, it would have been explicitly present as one of the rights of patent holder in Article 28.1 of the TRIPS Agreement. While introducing section 271(f) in the US Patent Act prohibiting export of components, the export of patented products was not banned. The assertion of the USA that permitting export of patented products to satisfy the requirements of compulsory licensing raises a very important issue whether a country can introduce in international negotiations the provisions which are not present in its own domestic law and whether such introduction amounts to extra-constitutional method of changing or introducing an amendment in the domestic law. During the TRIPS negotiations, the USA using the proposals from the EC, extended monopolies to import, offer to sell and the period of patenting to 20 years as part of its obligations and commitments to comply with the TRIPS Agreement through URAA. During the argument leading to the changes in its Patent Act through URAA, the USA insisted, that the TRIPS agreement was a product of Arthur Dunkel's draft prepared in 1993. The letter from EC Trade Commissioner Brettan to the US Congress suggests that there was a very close cooperation between these nations to extend the monopolies during the TRIPS negotiations. In the context of para 6 of the Doha Declaration solution, the EC initially proposed use of Article 30 of the TRIPS Agreement to permit export of patented product to fulfill the requirements of Article 31 among a number of suggestions. However, the USA from the beginning insisted that Article 30 of TRIPS does not permit export of patented products even under Article 30 exemptions. The interpretations of various courts both in the USA and the EC confirms that the provision is totally territorial and it would not cover prohibition on export of products without even resorting to any use of exemption under Article 30 of the TRIPS agreement. The analysis also suggests that although both the USA and the EC have passed specific legislations to remove direct effect of the WTO Agreement in spite of presence of Article XVI:4 of the GATT 1994 and Article 23.2(a) of the DSU requiring compliance of their rules, regulations and administrative orders with the GATT provisions and the reports of the Panel and Appellate Body, the provisions introduced at the behest of the USA and the EC have been treated to have binding effect on the domestic legal system thereby using their duopolistic power and influence at international treaty negotiations to introduce provisions in its domestic law directly or indirectly which can only be labeled as extras-constitutional.

Heads in the Sand as the Tide Rises: Environmental Ethics and the Law on Climate Change

I. INTRODUCTION In 1992 the Preamble to Agenda 21 gave a clear definition of the magnitude of the environmental crisis together with a prescription for remedies. Article 1.1 states: Humanity stands at a defining moment in its history. We are confronted with a perpetuation of disparities between and within nations, a worsening poverty, hunger, ill health and illiteracy, and the continued deterioration of ecosystems on which we depend for our well-being. However, integration of environment and development concerns, and greater attention to them will lead to the fulfillment of basic needs, improved living standards for all, better protected and managed ecosystems and a safer, prosperous future. No nation can achieve this on their own; but together we can - in a global partnership for sustainable development. Nonetheless at the new millennium we confront an accelerating environmental crisis. The tools we have developed to respond, over the last 30 years, are little than a weak patchwork of laws, covering narrow and segregated sectors of international activity.(1) Many of these laws are treaties that have not been ratified or implemented by the world's nations. Clearly, is needed. This paper argues that the something more is the development, and the implementation in law, of an ecological ethic.(2) It begins by illustrating some of the benefits of implementing such an ethic, within the specific context of climate change. The particular focus is on the difference an ecological approach would make to our choice of response measures. In later sections, this paper makes reference to other examples of the development and legal implementation of an ecological ethic, including: the creation of a comprehensive, integrated and ethically guided global framework treaty for international environmental law; the Earth Charter and IUCN Covenant on Environment and Development initiatives; and the emergence of ecological rights. Law is reflective of prevailing social attitudes, conventional thinking and values. They provide an important foundation for law, and are perhaps most clearly reflected in the environmental laws and policy of states.(3) A close analysis of legal principles and doctrines, together with specific criteria and standards, reveal the values, or ethic(s), upon which they are based.(4) An analysis of the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC)(5) and the Kyoto Protocol,(6) clearly reveals that the prevalent value is one of preserving current forms of economic prosperity, i.e., maintaining the economic status quo - business-as-usual. This paper demonstrates how legal language sanctions the economic status quo, and why the economically driven measures in the FCCC and Kyoto Protocol are seriously inadequate as a response to the threats of climate change. But how do we move towards the development and implementation of a new ecological ethic, one which values the environment above the economic status quo? And would its adoption lead to improvement? Would, for example, the response measures in the FCCC and Kyoto Protocol be any effective in managing climate change? This paper explores these questions by applying an eco-centric interpretation of the precautionary principle to selected response measures. As will be seen, this would require a form of prior environmental impact assessment to ensure that the measures adopted will be effective in achieving the necessary levels of environmental protection or mitigation. Applying the precautionary principle to existing reduction targets, the emissions trading concept, and the net approach, reveals very serious flaws in each. Reaching the level of consensus needed for the genuine implementation of an ecological value in law is the most difficult problem. The modus operandi of most domestic political systems, together with the nature of international treaty negotiations, means that only a large scale and fundamental change in the attitude and behaviour of the world's civilian population (particularly those from developed states) will create the necessary political will for change. …