The Montreal Protocol Sample Clauses

The Montreal Protocol. An Assessment On September 16, 1987, twenty-four states signed the Montreal Protocol, which expanded the goals of the Vienna Convention by creating a treaty that obligated parties to reduce their ozone depleting substance emissions in relation to 1986 base-levels.49 From the outset, the negotiating parties to the Montreal Protocol recognized the existence of scientific uncertainty and, hence, placed no specific limit on any of these harmful substances. However, the negotiators did create a separate limit for the total amount of ozone depletion caused by the parties to the Protocol.50 In this way, the negotiators built sufficient flexibility into the functioning of the Montreal Protocol. Xxxxxxx Xxxxxxxx, the chief U.S. negotiator to the Montreal Protocol, also maintains that the Montreal protocol was designed to be flexible “to be reopened and adjusted as needed, on the basis of the periodically scheduled scientific, economic, environmental, and technological assessments.”51 Thus, as scientific data progressed, the parties began to implement direct controls on specific substances through subsequent amendments.52 The Montreal Protocol also implemented two important provisions during the framing of the agreement. The first was the ability to “adjust” reduction targets, ideally by consensus, but if necessary, by two-thirds majority of the parties representing at least half of the total consumption of all the parties.53 Such adjustments are binding on all parties - even on non-consenting parties.54 The