Conceptualizing the implementation of decisions on environmental conflicts beyond the nation state

In this paper, I conceptualize the national implementation of agreements from compliance mechanisms in multilateral environmental agreements and judgements from courts on supra- and international environmental conflicts. Starting from the observation that the impact of climate change is increasing in the absence of specialised courts related to supra- and international environmental conflicts and backlash from populist governments and political regimes, implementing legal obligations is crucial to protect Earth’s environment from harm. However, systematic insights on the national implementation of agreements from compliance mechanisms and court judgements made beyond the nation state are underexplored. Applying a concept-structural perspective, I investigate the conditions explaining the implementation of such agreements and judgements by making use of existing research on policy implementation to enable a comparison of different processes of national implementation across different agreements and judgements. I will develop an innovative concept-structural framework based on two crucial explanations, which reflect the existing management and enforcement approaches and follow a conjunctural logic: one based on the mechanisms used to solve conflicts, and another relating to the perceived legitimacy of the relevant institutions and processes of conflict resolution. The framework enables systematic comparisons across agreements and judgements and thus accounts for a variety of different but equally valid explanations. Later empirical results will directly feed back into the concept-structural framework and be used for theoretical fine-tuning. This approach will provide generalisable insights on the national implementation of managerial agreements and court judgements on environmental conflicts