Reflections on international environmental adjudication: international adjudication vs. compliance mechanisms in multilateral environmental agreements

This chapter describes the general trend in Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEA) to-wards the establishment of managerial compliance mechanisms, and discusses their main insti-tutional and procedural features, before assessing their overall performance. This overview of compliance mechanisms in global MEA, will in turn provide the backdrop for reflecting on some of the recent developments in the case law of the ICJ. It argues that Whaling in the Antarctic sheds light on some of the issues that may have kept States from bringing claims based on mul-tilateral treaties before international courts – yet challenges remain for adjudicating international environmental disputes through international courts and tribunals. The chapter concludes with some reflections about the distinctive roles and potential complementarities between internation-al environmental adjudication and regime-internal managerial compliance control in the broader picture of global environmental governance.