Global warming is the most severe environmental challenge faced by humanity today and the costs of responding effectively will be high. While Russia's ratification of the Kyoto Protocol ensures the treaty's entry into force, lack of capacity, or incentives to renege on their commitments, will impede mitigation efforts in many countries. An important prerequisite for the proper functioning of the Protocol is that its compliance system - which is spelled out by the Marrakesh Accords - proves effective.

Implementing the Climate Regime describes and analyses Kyoto's compliance system. Organized into four parts, Part I describes the emergence and design of the compliance system, while Part II analyses various challenges to its effective operation - such as the development of norms, verification and the danger that the use of punitive 'consequences' may also hurt compliant countries. Part III discusses the potential role of external enforcement, with particular emphasis on trade sanctions. Part IV addresses the relationship between Kyoto compliance on one hand, and international governance, oil companies and green NGOs on the other.

Preface * Notes on Contributors * Acronyms and Abbreviations * Introduction and Main Findings * Part I: The Kyoto Compliance Regime: Emergence and Design * The Negotiation of a Kyoto Compliance System * The Kyoto Compliance System: Towards Hard Enforcement * Part II: Challenges to Effective Operation of the Compliance Regime * Flexibility, Compliance and Norm Development in the Climate Regime * Reporting and Verification of Emissions and Removals of Greenhouse Gases * Effective Enforcement and Double-edged Deterrents: How the Impacts of Sanctions also Affect Complying Parties * Part III: External Enforcement - Parties and Non-parties * The Pros and Cons of External Enforcement * Trade Measures, WTO and Climate Compliance: The Interplay of International Regimes * Part IV: Compliance, NGOs and International Governance * The Role of Green NGOs in Promoting Climate Compliance * Major Oil Companies in Climate Policy: Strategies and Compliance * Enhancing Climate Compliance - What are the Lessons to Learn from Environmental Regimes and the EU? * Epilogue: The Future of Kyoto's Compliance System * Index

Olav Schram Stokke is a Senior Research Fellow at the Fridtjof Nansen Institute in Norway. Jon Hovi is Professor of political science at the University of Oslo and a Senior Research Fellow at CICERO Center for International Climate and Environmental Research-Oslo. Geir Ulfstein is Professor of law and Director of the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights at the University of Oslo.