Membership in multilateral environmental agreements and global security challenges

Abstract

The paper points to the relations between multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) with global characteristics and contemporary security problems. Starting from the existing architecture of MEAs, the importance of several key global security challenges (climate change, water resource management, biodiversity protection, waste management and hazardous chemicals) has been ephasised. Status of the members of the UN Security Council, Republic of Serbia (RS) and RS' neighboroughing countries (EU members) in MEAs is overviewed. The basis of the analysis is 15 MEAs open for universal membership, whose depository is the UN Secretary General. It is noted that there is no uniform membership of the states UN Security Council' members in the MEAs. Some of the UN Security Council's members are not contracting party in several MEAs. At the same time, EU member states (those who are permanent members of the UN Security Council, as well as RS neighboring EU countries) are members of majority of the MEAs. RS, in terms of the number of MEAs where is a contracting party, lags behind the neighboring states EU members.

Keywords

• international environmental agreements
• global security
• un security council
• eu
• republic of serbia