Accountability in Environmental Governance

On 28 May 2025, the Global Governance Innovation Network at the Stimson Center, Washington, DC, published an important issue brief on Options for Strengthening Accountability Mechanisms in Global Environmental Governance by Sylvia Karlsson-Vinkhuyzen and Arthur Lyon Dahl, both IEF board members. The 13 page issue brief was commissioned by the Climate Governance Commission and co-sponsored by the International Environment Forum, Wageningen University and the One World Trust.

While states have adopted major international conventions on climate change, biodiversity, desertification and hundreds of other Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs), degradation of the environment continues to accelerate. Current approaches to implementation are insufficient, lacking accountability mechanisms that could improve performance. When present, existing follow-up mechanisms are explicitly facilitative and exclude sanctions. This issue brief outlines three principal options for strengthening accountability mechanisms, and thereby the implementation of MEAs:
1) increase the effectiveness of current facilitative mechanisms in the short-term;
2) increase the use of ‘coercive’ informal and formal accountability mechanisms outside the individual MEA; and
3) persuade states to agree to stronger sanctions-based mechanisms in the long-term.

Addressing the long-standing criticism that international negotiations lack teeth and allow for open-ended commitments without accountability, the paper first reviews current trends and four reasons for the failure of environmental agreements:
1. Poor treaty design;
2. Insufficient compliance and implementation of MEA obligations;
3. Effective accountability mechanisms strengthen action; and
4. Few, if any, MEAs have effective accountability mechanisms.
This is because of states’ general unwillingness to stigmatize violations of obligations — let alone impose sanctions.

Making accountability mechanisms work

Some of the categories of contexts that influence state behavior are those that are only power-driven, join when it serves their short- or long-term interests, care about their interests but also about their identity, are willing but not able, or change by doing, learning as they go. They respond differently to mechanisms that are coercive (supranational or outside MEAs), or facultative: incentive based, enabling learning, or providing capacity.

There is currently no supranational enforceable accountability mechanism that could make power-driven states to either be part of a MEAs or act on its obligations. Facilitative accountability mechanisms could include:
- Shared accountability (beyond formal) based on ethical concern;
- Broad accountability focusing on inputs (efforts), processes and outcomes;
- Dynamic accountability with learning as a major outcome.

Recommendations

The issue brief makes recommendations concerning all these accountability mechanisms:

1. Mechanisms outside MEA regimes or with supranational characteristics:
a.) Use more unilateral trade sanctions.
b.) Build support, over the long term, for the gradual acceptance of supranational authority.

2. Incentive-based mechanisms:
a.) Strengthen existing quasi-accountability mechanisms in MEAs by expanding the mandate to include more tangible sanctions.
b.) Give the mandate to existing MEA mechanisms to award very tangible material rewards for high performance/high willingness to perform.
c.) Strengthen the soft pressure for implementation and compliance through stronger reputational sanctions and/or rewards from peer states, the UN, civil society, and domestic institutions.
d.) Support states’ process to self-allocate their fair share of responsibility for the collective goals set out in MEAs.
e.) Support the institutional infrastructure and resources for monitoring states’ implementation of international obligations.

3. Enable learning:
a.) Strengthen shared accountability by supporting analysis of and discourses for States and other actors that frame the implementation of MEAs as their moral responsibility.
b.) Strengthen broad accountability by encouraging formal and informal accountholders to monitor inputs, process, and outcomes.
c.) Strengthen learning outcomes of accountability mechanisms.
d.) Providing relevant capacity.

Finally, the paper suggests some ways forward in the face of strong state resistance. For the deeper institutional changes, sudden disasters could open a policy window for fast change. It might help to modify the interpretation of what consensus means, since the consensus rule allows any one country to block agreement. The deficit in trust for both governments and the UN due to past failures in implementing commitments can, in part, be addressed by creating transparent accountability mechanisms. The Pact for the Future makes a number of calls for accountability mechanisms. Some effort is needed to overcome the barrier raised by national sovereignty.

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SOURCE: https://www.stimson.org/2025/options-for-strengthening-accountability-m…