Multilateral Environmental Agreements: Legal Status Of

Description:
The present study seeks to examine the genesis, development, and proliferation of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) - in-built law-making mechanisms and processes of institutionalization - and their ad hoc treaty-based status and the issue of the legal personality of their secretariats. It provides legal understanding of the location of MEA secretariats within an existing international host institution, as well as discussion of the issue of relationship agreements and interpretation of the commonly used language that triggers such relationships. It places under scrutiny the standard MEA phrase 'providing a secretariat', delegation of authority by the host institution to the head of the convention secretariat, possible conflict areas, host country agreement, and the workings of the relationship agreements. The book offers an authoritative account of the growing phenomenon in which an existing international institution provides a servicing base for MEA that, in turn, triggers a chain of legal implications involving the secretariat, the host institution, and the host country.

Table of Contents:
1. Institutionalizing cooperation; 2. Multilateral environmental regulation; 3. Nature and character of environmental agreements; 4. Host institution arrangements; 5. Legal status; 6. Conclusions.

Author Biography:
Professor Bharat H. Desai holds the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru Chair in International Environmental Law and is Professor of International Law as well as Chairman of the Centre for International Legal Studies at the School of International Studies of Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. As a Humboldt Fellow, he worked at the University of Bonn on the treatise Institutionalizing International Environmental Law. He is the author of Creeping Institutionalization: Multilateral Environmental Agreements and Human Security and an associate editor of the Yearbook of International Environmental Law, as well as Vice-Chairman of the Foundation for Development of International Law in Asia.