Environmental enforcement networks: Their role in climate change enforcement

Abstract

Climate change regulation, like all forms of regulation, requires allegations of non-compliance to be investigated. Enforcing climate change law and regulations is already sufficiently challenging given a myriad of social, economic and environmental issues. However, climate change regulation is further complicated due to cross-jurisdictional issues, transnational factors and its intersection with traditional and crossover crimes such as fraud and money laundering. It is anticipated that both non-compliant entities and organised criminal enterprises will challenge and frustrate the efforts of government regulators as they attempt to enforce climate change legislation. Therefore climate change regulators have much to learn from the experiences of other enforcement and regulatory agencies that have cooperated and worked collaboratively through various Environmental Enforcement Networks to advance and maximise their enforcement effort. This chapter considers the opportunities for cooperation, it recommends the establishment of a Climate Change Enforcement Network, and provides information for consideration if such a network was established.