Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
the Mediterranean cleaner than before? Or at least cleaner than it would
be without MAP? Then methodological problems such as how to measure
cleanliness would arise, which could only be superseded by proper design
of long-term environmental assessment and more importantly by a proper
feedback mechanism between science and policy. In the absence of a clear
scientii c answer the question might be asked, how well is MAP perform-
ing? Then the political aspects would come into play, combining all the rel-
evant issues, whether the regime enhances international cooperation and
security, creates structures, changes the behaviour of the actors, allows for
multi-stakeholder participation and so on. Such a holistic approach could
be the i rst rule for ef ective international environmental agreements.
Furthermore, practice has frequently deviated from theory. High expec-
tations, ambitious plans and disregard of social and economic considera-
tions have sometimes led to the establishment of regimes that are dii cult
to implement. A general drawback of international law is its voluntary
nature, as it cannot legally bind any state, apart from those willingly
participating in the regimes. For this reason a regime should provide
incentives to its members for participation, and also for compliance in the
long term, irrespective of whether these incentives would be of a politi-
cal or economic nature. Even the imposition of rules such as sanctions
might deter countries from agreeing, thus achieving even poorer results.
Economic considerations should also be taken into account in terms of
i nancial resources for all the parties to implement the provisions of the
agreement, but also in terms of fair social policy. It may be that the envi-
ronment is the object of protection, but in no way should this happen at
the expense of human needs. People in developing countries need bread
to eat before saving the earth and the sea, and even in developed ones
governments might not accept strict agreements requiring, for instance,
the closure of polluting industries, for fear of unemployment. Hence the
environmental and time limits of an agreement should be specii c but at
the same time realistic. Only regimes with a pragmatic vision have more
chance to succeed in the long term.
Ultimately, so far the discussion has focused on the criteria used when
assessing ef ectiveness of environmental regimes. Various scholars dei ne
various criteria accordingly. Hence they examine each case by using this
set of criteria and how the regime performs in each one of them at a given
moment in time. Nevertheless, times change and with them whole new
concepts in the environmental and political sphere arise. Some regimes
have a life of more than 30 years such as the Mediterranean Action Plan.
Which leads to the logical question: how can the ef ectiveness of MAP be
assessed today, since other criteria were used for its design 30 years ago?
Even concepts such as marine pollution had a dif erent meaning before the
