Compliance and governance are taking a high profile in current multilateral environmental negotiations. As this issue of Linkages Update reports, countries’ compliance was a major topic at last week’s Rotterdam Convention conference, although no final agreement was reached. Meanwhile, parties’ long-term compliance with their Kyoto Protocol pledges will be an underlying theme at the upcoming UN climate change conference in Nairobi.

While the Protocol already has a compliance process, ongoing talks regarding what will happen after the Protocol’s first “commitment period” expires in 2012 will be critical to the treaty’s long-term future. Without a post-2012 agreement in the coming months or years, the current compliance system will carry little weight.

On the governance front, this issue reports on a "Four Nations Initiative" that was launched to focus on reform of UN governance and the management of the Secretariat and discussions within the UN General Assembly on the role of the African Peer Review Mechanism in signaling and facilitating the commitment of African countries to good governance, among other discussions on governance topics.