Complicated Negotiations and Unclear Objectives in Global Forest Treaties International multilateral agreements require negotiations to occur between parties to agree to terms that are in the interest of all parties. Treaties can take several years to fully form, to be accurately implemented and justly enforced. Further, while parties look to past agreements to decide upon strategies, no two treaties and their processes of formation are the same. Likewise, different types of global issues will not undergo the same negotiations. While the trade of endangered species has been targeted by international agreements such as the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) or the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW), the topic of conserving global forests has been debated without the formation of any legally binding agreements. …show more content…
Forestry negotiations are multifaceted with the consideration of aboriginal land claims, land-use planning, logging practices and forest management, and climate change mitigation; thus, they involved multilevel discourse associated with culture, economics, and divisions between developed and developing countries. Therefore, this paper will analyze and compare the negotiation processes of whaling treaties and forest agreements to argue that parties have not successfully established global legally binding treaties because a) past attempts to create forest agreements have failed due to insignificant enforcement and implementation, b) global forest agreements require consensus on a wide range of objectives that cannot easily be addressed through one instrument, and c) the economic investment versus benefits is not equally distributed amongst