Transparency and International Environmental Institutions

Introduction In July 2011 the International Whaling Commission (IWC) adopted a resolution on ‘Improving the Effectiveness of Operations’ within it. The fact that this resolution was adopted by consensus, and that it is easily accessible at the Commission’s website, may not seem remarkable. A resolution on ‘effectiveness of operations’ should not be controversial and, in the age of the internet, we have become accustomed to being able to follow the activities of international environmental institutions (IEIs) from our offices or homes, often even in ‘real time’. In other words, we have come to take for granted a considerable degree of transparency in international environmental governance. And yet, transparency is a relative newcomer to international governance – the traditional mode of international governance, ‘namely diplomacy, has relied on secrecy and confidentiality’. The IWC resolution encapsulates the remarkable evolution of international law. Its anodyne title masks the fact that the resolution is above all about enhancing transparency. The IWC has been notorious for clinging to the old modes of diplomacy. Even member States could not obtain official written versions of IWC decisions until long after they were taken. Communications and documents were difficult or impossible to access on the Commission’s website, and the secretariat accepted untraceable cash payments for parties’ membership dues. While many member States had been demanding reforms for some time, others vigorously resisted. They did so successfully for years, until the IWC resolved, in July 2011, that its ‘procedures should be brought into line with current international good practice’. It acknowledged ‘the importance of transparency in international law’, the evolution of the ‘international law and practice relating to transparency and participation in international decision-making’, the emergence of good practice under the auspices of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs), that its operations could ‘benefit from enhanced transparency’, and that such improvements were ‘of vital importance’ to the ‘authority and legitimacy’ of the IWC.