Multilateral Environmental

Agreements

Overview

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 What are MEAs?

International legal instruments that:

 have a goal of environmental protection
 are concluded between a large number of states or
international organizations as parties
 concluded in written form
 governed by international law
 can be embodied in a single instrument or in two or more
related instruments (framework agreements)

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 Milestones in the evolution of MEAs

 Stockholm Conference on the Human Development (1972):

– first attempt to address inter-relationships of environment and
development at global level
– adopted first global action plan for environment
– established the United National Environmental Program (UNEP)
– accelerated development of modern MEAs: more than 60% of
existing MEAs are adopted after Rio
 The 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and
Development (UNCED):
– national and international policies redirected towards integration of
environmental, economic and development objectives
– Agenda 21 and Rio Declaration adopted
– development of new international regimes stimulated
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 Core MEAs

 MEAs of global significance

 negotiation, development or activities are
associated with UNEP work
 Main clusters:
– Biodiversity
– atmosphere
– land
– chemicals and hazardous wastes
– regional seas and related

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 MEA Commonalties

 Shared Goal:
– Sustainable Development
 Cross-cutting issue:
– pollution/waste management

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 MEA Clusters: Biodiversity

 Consists of MEAs related to protection and

conservation of biodiversity.
 Main MEA - The Biodiversity Convention

Protection of biodiversity is directly relevant to

pollution management and efficient use of resources,
and, therefore, to Cleaner Production

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 MEA Clusters: Atmosphere

MEAs aimed at protection of athmosphere from

pollutants. For example:
Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete
Ozone Layer
The Kyoto Protocol to the UN Framework
Convention on Climate Change

Implementation of the atmosphere cluster MEAs requires

effective pollution management and therefore
the cluster is directly relevant to Cleaner Production

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 MEA Clusters: Marine Environment

 Conventions relevant to marine environment:

– 17 Regional Seas Conventions and A number of Protocols on
land-based sources of pollution of marine environment
– Global Program of Action for the Protection of the Marine
Environment from Land-Based Activities (GPA)

Most MEAs in the marine cluster are multi-sectoral agreements

based on precautionary and preventive approaches,
therefore,Cleaner Production is relevant to these MEAs

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 MEA clusters:
Chemicals & Hazardous waste
 Deal with hazardous impacts of wastes and
chemical pollution
 Main treaties of the cluster:
– Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of
Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal
– Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent for Certain
Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade
– Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs).

Cleaner Production is relevant to all Conventions of the

cluster and helps to enchance synergies among them

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 Key concepts

 Legally-binding agreements
– set commitments in form of legally-binding targets and
time-tables
 Non-binding instruments
– set out important issues and priorities, foster discussion
and attention, and stimulate new thinking and
development of legally-binding instruments

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 MEA Implementation

 Implementation of an MEA
– a process of converting international commitments and
requirements into national law and policy in order to
induce behavioral change of target groups, i.e. those
actors causing the problem in question.
 Compliance
– refers to whether the countries adhere to the agreement
provisions and undertake implementation measures,
including procedural measures (e.g. national reporting)
 Effectiveness
– whether a MEAs resolved a problem that caused its
creation.
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Institutional elements of core MEAs (1)

 Conference of Parties (COP)

– Ultimate decision-making body on implementation and
development of their respective MEAs
 Secretariat
– Supports COP and performs a number of varied
functions depending on the mandate of the MEA
 Executive and subsidiary bodies
– Generally advisory in nature, report to COPs on
scientific, technical, or financial matters or on
implementation progress; internal or external, standing
bodies or ad hoc with a limited mandate
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Institutional elements of core MEAs (2)

 Clearinghouses
– Facilitate exchange of information (websites, databases
operated usually by the Secretariats)
 Implementation actors on national level
– Represented by the national authorities and/or
institutions, training and information centres
 Financial mechanisms

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 Financial mechanisms

 Regime Budgets
– MEAs can establish one of more of mandatory or voluntary trust
funds, most often administered by the international organizations that
provide the Secretariats. Budgets are proposed by Parties and
approved by the COPs
 Development Assistance
– Funds can be provided via foundations (e.g. UN Foundation),
bilateral arrangements, private sector donors and NGOs
 Other multilateral financing mechanisms
– Global Environment Facility, The Kyoto Protocol climate-related
mechanisms, the World Bank

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 Global Environment Facility
 A co-financing mechanism
– resources of developed countries, banks, NGOs, bilateral and multilateral
agencies to address global environmental problems within the framework
of country priorities
 GEF focal areas
– Biodiversity, climate change, international waters, ozone depletion, POPs,
land degradation.
 Project Eligibility
– Country-driven and endorsed by host Governments
– Produce identifiable global benefits
– Participation of all affected groups and transparency
– Consistency with the Conventions
– Posses strong scientific and technical merit
– Financially sustainable and cost-effective
– Include process for monitoring, evaluation and incorporation of lessons learned
– Play catalytic role that leverages other financing
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 Strengths and weaknesses
of modern MEAs

 Weaknesses:
– Lack of synergies among MEAs
– Inadequate implementation and coordination of MEAs at the
national level
– Inadequate compliance and enforcement
– Lack of environmental and performance indicators to measure the
effectiveness of MEAs
– Inadequate funding for selected MEAs
 Strengths:
– Growing commitment to explore synergies
– Increased attention to principles of precaution and prevention

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 What can Cleaner Production do? (1)

Shared Goal:
– Sustainable Development
 For MEAs, Cleaner Production can contribute to:
– wider use of prevention as the best strategy of
environmental protection
– issue linkage and providing positive incentives for
compliance and implementation
– strengthening synergies among MEAs
– adding flexibility to the agreements

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 What can Cleaner Production do? (2)
 Cross-cutting capacity building activities of CP
initiatives and MEAs :
– Policy advice
– Technical and financial assistance
– Assessment and management of pollution
– Education and awareness
– Information exchange
– Strengthened participation of all stakeholders in the
decision-making
– International partnership

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 Implementing MEAs via CP versus
traditional end-of-pipe approaches:
END of PIPE CLEANER PRODUCTION
Environmental Effectiveness
Shifts environmental problems from one Prevents environmental problems from occurring in
environmental medium to another; or forward in the first place
time Reduces negative environmental impacts along the life
cycle or a product, process or service along its life
cycle
Requires increased input of energy and materials Improves the resource efficiency
to operate the additional end-of-pipe installations Reduces the consumption of energy and materials

Can lead to the contradiction between goals of the
different MEAs
Has no or low potential for resolving some
complex environmental problems (ozone layer
depletion, global warming)
Relies on solving environmental problems via
narrowly defined environmental policies
Has potential to meet goals of the several MEAs at the
same time, contributing to sustainable development
Has potential to mitigate environmental problems
which cannot be tackled with the end-of-pipe
approaches
Encourages integration of environmental policies into
all sectors of the decision-making

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 Implementing MEAs via CP versus
traditional end-of-pipe approaches (contd.)
END of PIPE CLEANER PRODUCTION
Economic effectiveness
Can hinder development via requiring high capital Brings economic gains due to reduced costs on
and operating costs for the end-of-pipe solutions input materials and energy because of higher
without increasing the production output energy and material efficiency; increased
innovation and competitiveness
High costs of the end-of-pipe equipment increase Has potential to let developing countries to meet
reliance of the developing countries on the goals of MEAs via innovative solutions to
financial aid environmental problems
Often involves high administrative costs of Reduces the costs of enforcing legislation via
enforcing legislation offering incentives for self-compliance
Shifts inevitable burden of clean-up costs forward Countries with capacity in Cleaner Production
in time, so that future generations have to bear avoid or minimize the necessity to incur clean-up
them costs of environmental pollution in present and in
future
Social Effects
Results in the low participation in and compliance Can improve implementation of the MEAs by
and with MEAs due to the persisting opinion that offering to the Parties and implementation actors
environmental protection is burdensome for the positive incentives for participation, compliance
environment and implementation of the environmental
agreements
Can result in adverse response to the regulation Encourages the stakeholder dialogue via
from the regulated actors emphasizing multiple benefits of environmental
protection via CP

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