Beyond Vienna and Montreal: Multilateral agreements on greenhouse gases

Major reductions in emissions of all greenhouse gases are necessary to assure the integrity of the biosphere. National commitments by individual countries and concerted action by groups of large emitting nations, such as the Group of Seven major industrialized nations, are crucial for achieving process toward meaningful reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions. Binding multilateral instruments are also needed to attack global warming on a universal scale. New international institutions and decision-making processes may be desirable or even essential. The desirability of a framework or umbrella treaty - analogous to the Vienna Convention - with associated ancillary agreements - analogous to the Montreal Protocol - has dominated the discussion of multilateral climate instruments for some time. The need for a multilateral convention on climate has become widely recognized at the highest political levels and now appears to be universally accepted. The purpose of this article is to examine the implications of the Vienna-Montreal precedent and to stimulate debate on the form and substance of a global greenhouse-gas convention