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Report
Four
The
Final Exam
By
Chelsea Kopp
   
Part
One
With
Respect to The Bonn Convention on The Conservation of Migrating Species of
Wild Animals, Discuss the Role of NGOs and IGOs. (Question One )
 The
Bonn Convention is similar to many international treaties in that it uses
NGOs for resources and information and that NGOs are essential players and
contributors to the convention. The Bonn Convention is a treaty that
comes from the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP). The United
Nations is the largest and many would argue, the most successful IGO
today. UNEP has succeeded in creating many environmental treaties which
have helped to improve or started the process of improving and addressing envir
 onmental
problems.
One of the NGOs that is a major partner with the Bonn Convention
is BirdLife International.
BirdLife International is present in a 103 countries
and territories worldwide. (1) Many of the migrating birds that
BirdLife International is trying to protect are also listed in the
Appendixes I and II of endangered migrating species in the
Bonn Convention. BirdLife International does studies on the endangered
birds and
the Bonn Convention will often use the research done by BirdLife
International when writing Agreements. BirdLife International also
makes suggestions to the Bonn Convention on what they believe should be done
to protect endangered birds. Lastly, BirdLife International monitors
the effectiveness of the Agreements of the Bonn Convention by measuring
compliance and the improvements of the numbers of the species. (2)
The Bonn Convention cites BirdLife International multiple times in its
Convention of the Parties as a source of research and information.
Namely in the 7th Meeting on the Convention of the Parties which took place
on September 18-24, 2002 in Bonn Germany, the writings of which can be found
at: http://iisd.ca/linkages/cms/cop7/thur199.html.
BirdLife International has directly been in contact and cooperation with the
Bonn Convention. They share an interest in many of the same bird
species like the Ruddy Headed Goose, Houbara Bustard, Slender- billed
Curlew, Siberian Crane, Aquatic Warbler, Ferruginous Duck, White-headed
Duck, White-winged Flufftail, and Blue Swallow. (3)
Another NGO that has been of huge help and influence to the Bonn Convention
is the World Conservation
Union (IUCN). The IUCN suggested that there be a treaty created to
protect migrating species years before the Bonn Convention was created.
(4) "Germany took the lead in organizing the convention negotiations on
the basis of an IUCN draft, and the pact was adopted in 1979 in Bonn."
(5) The IUCN has directly participated in multiple Bonn Convention
Agreements and has a seat on the scientific council and observer status on
other conservation bodies. (6)  The
last NGO that I will discuss which has helped the Bonn Convention is the Wildlife
Conservation Society. The WCS helps preserve wildlife and habitats
through "international conservation, education, and the management of
the world's largest system of urban wildlife parks." (7) The WCS
has the goal of getting people interested in preserving wildlife and getting
them to take part in the conservation. The WCS has also recently
developed and started using satellite transmitters to track migrating
Caribbean Turtles. (8) This kind of technology could be a large help
to the Bonn Convention. WCS addresses all sorts of migrating animals
from birds, to sea life, to migrating mammals like elephants and gazelles.
(9)
There are many other NGOs that have contributed to the Bonn Convention that
will not be talked about in this paper that also have had a large impact on
the Convention. To learn more about the Bonn Convention go to the official
website at: http://www.wcmc.org.uk/cms/
Identifying IGOs that have a role in the Bonn Convention is a lot simpler.
Obviously the United Nations is an IGO that has affected the Bonn Convention
because the Bonn Convention is a UN treaty. Another IGO that could be
said to have an effect on the Convention is the European Union. The EU
has signed, but not ratified, two Agreements of the Bonn Convention.
These two Agreements are the Agreement on the Conservation of
African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA) and Agreement on the
Conservation of Small Cetaceans of the Baltic and North Seas (ASCO). (10)
To see the list of parties to the Bonn Convention click: http://www.wcmc.org.uk/cms/pdf/en/party%20list/cms_party_list_en.pdf
Part
Two
What
Techniques Has The International Community Developed in the Last 30 years to
Bring About Compliance with International Law Within Sovereign States and
How Effective Have They Been? (Question Two)
International
environmental law is considered effective if it contributes to improvements
in environmental quality or slows or prevents future environmental
degradation. (11) International law is only valid when people believe
that it is existent and can be of use. It is only recently that
people's faith in international law has widened its use and popularity.
The effectiveness of an inte rnational
treaty is not usually expected to be seen in the short-term. A good
way to estimate how effective a treaty is in interim is to look at the
levels of compliance
of states. (12)
To prompt compliance governments need to realize that there is a problem and
this usually requires the networking of groups from within the state, like
that
of environmental NGOs. (13) Over the past 30 years there has been a
rapid increase of environmental NGOs that have forced government attention
and resources to be put towards the degradation of the environment.
These NGOs do research and studies on the increasing environmental problems
that are a result of human destruction and neglect. The NGOs present
their research to the states and to IGOs as a way of persuading them to take
action.
After states or IGOs signs onto an environmental treaty, environmental NGOs
then take it upon themselves to monitor the actual compliance of the states
and the effectiveness of the treaty. NGOs monitor the compliance not
only to share their findings with the international community but also to
help individual states to know whether or not their municipal laws are
helping or are being obeyed.
There are no international police who are going to come and arrest the
states who break international environmental treaties. However, there
are deterrents from disobeying environmental law. States comply with
international agreements because through increasing globalization, states
are all interconnected and they have a strong interest in obtaining and
keeping good standing with the international community. (14 )
The threat of sanctions and poor trade relations are always a fear of any
state whether they have a weak or strong economy.
Prior to
1970 almost all of international law was customary law. Customary laws are
"norms" or regularities in behavior among states that are not
written down.(15) These are the "gentleman's agreements" or the
laws that everybody just knows to follow because that is the way things have
been done for a long time or because they are just common sense and general
principals. Proving customary law was difficult; courts had to show
that the state had a general acceptance of the rule by showing consistent
practice of it and that the state felt a sense of legal obligation to abide
by it or an "opinio juris." (16) Since international law is only
valid when states agree to follow it, it was very hard for the International
Court of Justice (The World Court), to hold states accountable when there
was nothing
written to prove the law was did in fact exist.
Since the 1970s international environmental law has been converting into
treaty law. New international treaties have been increasingly emerging
and Agreements come
form these treaties which address specific environmental problems.
Treaty law requires a written document listing the problem that is to be
undertaken and the species and habitats which are in danger. The most
essential a spect
of treaty law is that states sign onto the treaty, promising compliance.
By requiring signature of sovereign states it is easier for the
international community to hold non-complying states accountable for their
neglect.
There are penalties to breaking international agreements that are sometimes
written out in the treaty or applied after the treaty has been disobeyed.
These consequences can be very serious, as we have seen in the case of Iraq.
The first action taken is usually the condemning of the nation through
international public opinion. Sometimes two disputing states will use third
party intervention to mediate their disagreement. There are countries that
are known international mediators are countries like Canada, Switzerland,
and Denmark.
Sometimes arbitral tribunals will get together and make decisions concerning
international law. Individual states and the UN and its members can
apply sanctions to countries that have broken international law.
Sanctions can include the withholding of aid or trade sanctions. In
the case of North Korea the US revoked an agreement that they had which
supplied energy and financial aid. The last resort to enforce
international law can be war. (17)
Part
Three
To
What Extent Can the UN become a suitable Mechanism For Legal Protection of
International Resources and Environments? Illustrate Your Answer With
Respect to a Specific International Treaty Regime. (Question
Three)
 The
United Nations has played the major role in shaping international law
especially since treaty law has been growing in esteem. The UN is the
largest international organization and non-state actor. From the UN many
treaties are drafted and signed through its sub-organizations like the UN
Environmental Program which is the principal international law organization,
the UN Development Program who is designed to elevate poverty and p romote
economic development and the UN commission on Sustainable Development, whose
job is to integrate environmental problems with economic problems.(18)
All of the UN agencies have goals and ideas on how to help the environment
but they do not work together and they have small, increasingly conditional
budgets. The UN helps international environmental law in many aspects they
"facilitate the creation of most new treaty law by sponsoring
scientific deliberation on environmental issues, preparing draft conventions...initiating
and hosting negotiations of new international instruments for environmental
protection...contribute to the development of customary international law by
passing resolutions, declarations, model codes and guidelines on
environmental issues."(19)
Although the UN is very large and has many members, these are huge tasks,
the UN makes and helps to maintain international law but it does not have
the man power or budget to cover all the issues. The first sub-organization
created to help protect the environment was UNEP and although this was a
large step forward it under went a financial crisis and the members states
of the UN lost confidence in it. (20)
Over the past few years it has become a trend of UN members to pick and
choose which projects and sub-organizations that they want their money to go
to. The United States is becoming especially well-known for pulling their
funding on projects that the y
no longer believe in or feel like being a part of. (21) This puts an extra
strain onto the sub-organizations to prove how necessary their goals are and
show their progress towards achieving them. Budget constraints and impulsive
contributor
states are the UN's Environmental Program's main set backs.
In 1972, the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in
Stockholm, recognized the need for countries to co-operate in the
conservation of animals that migrate across national boundaries. (22) This
resulted in the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild
Animals. The Convention was concluded in Germany in 1979 and in 1983
the Bonn Convention entered into force. The Bonn Convention's
membership has grown steadily since 1983 and includes 80 parties from
Africa, Central and South America, Asia, Europe and Oceania. (23)
As a UN treaty the Bonn Convention gets a significant amount of attention
and funding that it would probably not otherwise receive. Treaties
that have been established through the UNEP are usually more successful and
states feel a greater obligation to sign on the comply.
Part
Four
Endnotes
1.
'Partners of Wetlands International,' Wetlands International (September,
2002), available at http://www.wetlands.org/networks/partners.htm
2. How We Work,' BirdLife International (2001), available at http://www.birdlife.net/work/index.cfm
3. 'The 7th Meeting on the Convention of the Parties to the Convention on
Migratory Species,' LINKAGES (September, 2002) available at http://iisd.ca/linkages/cms/cop7/thur199.html
4. 'CMS Takes Off With IUCN On Board,' Biodiversity Conventions
(January, 2001) available at http://www.iucn.org/bookstore/bulletin/2000/wc1/content/cmstakesoff.pdf
5. 'CMS Takes Off With IUCN On Board,' Biodiversity Conventions (January,
2001) available at http://www.iucn.org/bookstore/bulletin/2000/wc1/content/cmstakesoff.pdf
6. 'CMS Takes Off With IUCN On Board,' Biodiversity Conventions (January,
2001) available at http://www.iucn.org/bookstore/bulletin/2000/wc1/content/cmstakesoff.pdf
7. 'About the WCS,' Wildlife Conservation Society (2003) available at http://wcs.org/home/about
8. 'Satellite Transmitters Track Caribbean Turtles,' Wildlife Conservation
Society (September 2000) available at
http://wcs.org/7411/?art=9190
9. 'In The Wild,' Wildlife Conservation Society (2003) available at http://wcs.org/home/wild
10. 'Parties to the Convention of the Conservation of Migratory Species of
Wild Animals,' The Bonn Convention (March, 2003) available at http://www.wcmc.org.uk/cms/pdf/en/party%20list/cms_party_list_en.pdf
11. Hunter, David et al, International Environmental Law and Policy
(Foundation Press, 2002)
12. Hunter, David et al, International Environmental Law and Policy
(Foundation Press, 2002)
13. Hunter, David et al, International Environmental Law and Policy
(Foundation Press, 2002)
14. Hunter, David et al, International Environmental Law and Policy
(Foundation Press, 2002)
15. Hunter, David et al, International Environmental Law and Policy
(Foundation Press, 2002)
16. Hunter, David et al, International Environmental Law and Policy
(Foundation Press, 2002)
17. Hunter, David et al, International Environmental Law and Policy
(Foundation Press, 2002)
18. Hunter, David et al, International Environmental Law and Policy
(Foundation Press, 2002)
19. Hunter, David et al, International Environmental Law and Policy
(Foundation Press, 2002)
20. Hunter, David et al, International Environmental Law and Policy
(Foundation Press, 2002)
21. Hunter, David et al, International Environmental Law and Policy
(Foundation Press, 2002)
22. 'Guide on the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of
Wild Animals,' UNEP (January, 2002) available at
http://www.unep-wcmc.org/cms/pdf/CMS_Guide_Jan02_en.pdf
23. 'Guide on the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory
Species of Wild Animals,' UNEP (January, 2002) available at
http://www.unep-wcmc.org/cms/pdf/CMS_Guide_Jan02_en.pdf
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