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Options for Strengthening Accountability Mechanisms in Global Environmental Governance

Issue Brief

Three options for strengthening accountability in global environmental governance

By Sylvia Karlsson-Vinkhuyzen, Arthur Dahl

Contributed by Climate Governance Commission, International Environment Forum, One World Trust, Wageningen University

Posted 16 June 2025

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.

Given the strong current resistance of many states to the latter two options, we focus on the first option and propose three pathways for increasing the effectiveness of facilitative accountability mechanisms: nurturing mindsets of ‘shared’ accountability based on ethical concerns; enabling ‘broad’ accountability through assessments of progress covering a broad range of implementation efforts, processes and outcomes; and empowering a ‘dynamic’ form of accountability which fosters learning. These pathways can most rapidly be accomplished by changing existing institutions and their mandates, rather than fundamentally restructuring global institutions and, if necessary, establishing shadow structures outside UN institutions. One concrete option is to establish an independent global scientific advisory council that could suggest how to allocate responsibility for collective goals, such as dividing the available carbon budget based on transparent ethical criteria to encourage more shared accountability, complementing the Paris Agreement’s narrow focus on procedural obligations. Other alternatives suggested in this brief include strengthening learning outcomes of accountability mechanisms by drawing on existing good practice, such as creating opportunities for meaningful peer-to-peer learning — particularly among states in the same region — and building support over the long term for gradual acceptance of supranational authority in decision-making over issues essential to humanity’s collective security.

   

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. We suggest 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. 

Given the strong current resistance of many states to the latter two options, we focus on the first option and propose three pathways for increasing the effectiveness of facilitative accountability mechanisms: nurturing mindsets of ‘shared’ accountability based on ethical concerns; enabling ‘broad’ accountability through assessments of progress covering a broad range of implementation efforts, processes and outcomes; and empowering a ‘dynamic’ form of accountability which fosters learning. These pathways can most rapidly be accomplished by changing existing institutions and their mandates, rather than fundamentally restructuring global institutions and, if necessary, establishing shadow structures outside UN institutions. One concrete option is to establish an independent global scientific advisory council that could suggest how to allocate responsibility for collective goals, such as dividing the available carbon budget based on transparent ethical criteria to encourage more shared accountability, complementing the Paris Agreement’s narrow focus on procedural obligations. Other alternatives suggested in this brief include strengthening learning outcomes of accountability mechanisms by drawing on existing good practice, such as creating opportunities for meaningful peer-to-peer learning -particularly among states in the same region- and building support over the long term for gradual acceptance of supranational authority in decision-making over issues essential to humanity’s collective security.

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