The Montreal Protocol: The First Adaptive Global Environmental Regime?

Abstract

Does the Montreal Protocol represent a new model for the negotiation and operation of international regimes? Other papers have identified several innovative aspects of the Protocol, of which I will concentrate on one. I propose that one fundamental respect in which the Protocol is a new model for international environmental diplomacy is that it is the world’s first adaptive global environmental regime. This adaptive character is related to the “dynamic and flexible” character of the Protocol that several other participants, including Dr. Tolba and Ambassador Benedick, have identified, but poses more specific conditions. An adaptive regime is one that, in pursuit of an unchanging goal, does two things. It supports identification, synthesis, and assimilation of changes in relevant knowledge; and it incorporates the results of changed knowledge into revisions of control measures, policies, and institutional arrangements. Put another way, in articulating its original goal, an adaptive regime incorporates the insight that what is needed to attain the goal cannot be fully known at the outset, but must be progressively adjusted over time.