Challenges for international environmental lawyers : climate change compliance

Modern lawyers face the challenge of how to provide, at international law, legal regulatory frameworks that can help to manage major global environmental problems in the future. The advent of climate change is one of the most pressing environmental threats to humankind and the Earth's environment. Unfortunately, the current structure of international law has not developed as a system designed to deal with global environmental problems that affect all nations. The effects of climate change will adversely impact all countries, within their territorial jurisdiction as well as in the global environment beyond state jurisdiction. This paper discusses the development of the compliance and enforcement mechanisms under the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in order to determine the limitations of these mechanisms. The question posed is whether the compliance and enforcement mechanisms should undergo further reform before the next international agreement on climate change is negotiated in 2015. This paper also discusses whether new legal proposals could be useful to manage some of the consequences that are likely to occur as a result of the impacts of climate change.