By seeking to curtail the net production of greenhouse gases, which are endemic to nearly all human industrial activities, the Kyoto Protocol promises to be among the most complicated and far-reaching of environmental treaties to date. Parties consequently desire reassurance that their efforts to fulfill their obligations will be met by similar efforts on behalf of those Parties with similar obligations. A well-crafted compliance system can provide such reassurance. Because the scope of the Protocol is unprecedented, its success may depend on an entirely new, “sui generis” compliance system. International institutions,however, are rarely created out of a void—even novel ones. Accordingly, we offer this survey paper to policy makers and negotiators on the belief that Parties, particularly those who have relatively little practical experience with environmental compliance systems, can benefit by reviewing how states have dealt with compliance issues in other multilateral venues.
We survey agreements targeting pollution and the use of natural resources. We also review regimes that regulate other activities, including arms control, human rights, labor relations, commodities, international trade, and multilateral finance. We do not purport to provide an overview of all multilateral environmental agreements—most of them do not contain provisions for meaningful compliance systems. Instead, we review those agreements that we believe can provide useful lessons and examples for Kyoto policy makers.