Unfavorable Cost-benefit Structures of Compliance Sample Clauses

Unfavorable Cost-benefit Structures of Compliance. With the notable exception of the U.S., and the non-binding obligations imposed on developing countries, the Kyoto Protocol enjoys a significant participation with 174 parties. But is this enough? The majority of literature devoted to answering this question maintains that it is not. Indeed, several critics point to the fact that despite the broad participation in the Kyoto Protocol by industrialized nations, compliance remains largely weak.141 The larger point is, therefore, that despite significant participation, climate change issues are not being adequately solved, bringing the efficacy of the Kyoto Protocol into question. Thus, in addition to broad participation, an effective multilateral environmental agreement necessarily needs to “deepen” cooperation.142 Indeed, many scholars argue that broad participation can, in fact, be a product of mostly shallow cooperation.143 To deepen cooperation, a treaty or MEA must necessarily design an effective compliance system to enforce commitments. Compliance systems therefore play an important role in framing the rules of the game. Scholars devoted to the study of compliance and enforcement advance two general approaches to maintaining compliance: (1) an “enforcement approach” where non- compliance is deterred through the use of threats, sanctions and other methods of punishment; and (2) a “management approach” where the parties clearly delineate obligations and use positive incentives to encourage compliance with these obligations.144 While both approaches seek the same outcome, they use very different means of ensuring such an outcome. Xxxxxxxxxx describes how the enforcement approach uses a variety of “hard” sanctions (such as trade sanctions or economic penalty), whereas the management approach uses a variety of “soft” sanctions (such as noncompliance reports and privilege suspension).145 A closer look at the Montreal Protocol, however, illustrates that the two approaches are not billion. In the same light, the benefits of complying with the Kyoto Protocol are estimated to be roughly