THE NON-COMPLIANCE PROCEDURE OF THE CARTAGENA PROTOCOL ON BIOSAFETY: AN EFFECTIVE MECHANISM?

Abstract

The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, adopted the 29th Jaunary 2000, foresees the establishment of ‘procedures and institutional mechanisms to promote compliance with the provisions of this Protocol and to address cases of non-compliance’ (article 34). On this basis, taking the ‘Noncompliance Procedure’ of the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer as a model, the first Meeting of the Parties to the Cartagena Protocol adopted such a procedure in 2004 (decision BS-I/7), as an autonomous mechanism to promote compliance with the Parties’ commitments. The basically assisting functions that are inherent to this mechanism have been entrusted to a subsidiary body to the Meeting of the Parties, the Compliance Committee, which exerts its powers according to a simple and cooperative procedure. Nevertheless, to the date no Party has resorted to this mechanism in order to solve any issues of non-compliance. Based on the formal assessment of the mechanism, this article tries to elucidate the causes for this situation, paying particular attention to structural deficiencies within the mechanism, and to the vis atractiva exerted by exogenous enforcement mechanisms.