Bridging the gap between international and domestic law - an interactional analysis of the UK's internalisation of the CBD Aichi Targets.

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Biodiversity is being lost at an unprecedented and alarming rate and the planet is currently experiencing yet another mass extinction (Ceballos et al. 2015). The delicate balance of biodiversity on our planet includes all living things and their interactions that makes it habitable. If this balance is disturbed, it is predicted to have far reaching consequences beyond just the loss of species. For example, exacerbated climate change is predicted to create food insecurity and increase inequality - all of which could lead to widespread conflict (The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2000). The 1992 United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) is the primary multinational treaty addressing the global level biodiversity loss. The deadline for the CBD's current strategic plan is 2020 but it is clear that most of the 20 Aichi Biodiversity Targets (ATs) will not be achieved, which means that the system needs to be strengthened to ensure compliance with its legal obligations. Considering the precarious state of biodiversity globally, the chapters produced as part of the proposed monograph (which will emerge from my PhD thesis) as part of this fellowship will explore what needs to be done to make the legal regime under the CBD more effective at addressing the global biodiversity crisis. The monograph first tests the existing multidisciplinary theoretical understandings to probe why the ATs have not been achieved. It then analyses the dynamics of the CBD, as a source of binding international legal obligations, to achieve the ATs. This analysis spans from the creation of legal obligations to compliance with such obligations at the international level, as well as their implementation at the domestic level. How CBD obligations travel from international to national law and are implemented at the domestic level has not been studied before and this is the first ever research to explain these dynamics, which not only explains the causes behind the failure to achieve the current targets but will also guide the development of a future strategic plan.The research concludes that the current strategic plan failed in part due to limitations of processes at the international level. It argues that these limitations are difficult to overcome because of the CBD's decision making process that requires consensus of all State Parties. It argues that this limitation can be overcome through reversing the process of obligation creation, that is, the development of domestic practices which subsequently develop shared understandings among State Parties and can influence decision making in the international arena. As a comprehensive package to tackle the biodiversity crisis, the proposed monograph suggests improvements in legal and policy making processes at all levels of governance. In particular, it argues that there is an opportunity at the domestic level to not only meet the requirements of international obligations that have traveled down to domestic laws and policies but also to further strengthen them to increase the effectiveness of interactions around them in order to achieve compliance. Secondly, it argues that there is an opportunity for these strengthened understandings formed at the domestic level to feed back up to the international level and to influence and push forward shared understandings at this level. The research uses a novel mixed methodology combining doctrinal analysis, interviews and a micro-ethnography of CBD Conference of the Parties 13 (CBD COP). The research, therefore, adopts a unique socio-legal approach using different theories to understand the effect of international legal obligations and by applying the theory of interactional law to understand the making of international obligations and their travel to domestic level (Brunnée and Toope, 2010). This pioneering, high impact research fills an important gap in existing literature on understanding domestic implementation of international legal obligations.