Wildlife Enforcement Monitoring System (WEMS): A solution to support compliance of Multilateral Environmental Agreements

Abstract Given the rising number of international environmental agreements, it is increasingly difficult for many developing countries to meet the basic commitments of compliance to Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs). One major reason for non-compliance is an unforced restriction on enforcement information flow to the national environmental governance repository either due to policy regulations or, technological hindrance. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the importance of a global information technology framework for MEAs that will help in enhancing the flow of information from a grassroot level to a national repository and then serving to various international agencies involved in monitoring of enforcement and compliance to MEAs. The paper defines the current challenges in global and national-level environmental information gathering and analysis and then, explains the technological and policy framework model adopted in the Wildlife Enforcement Monitoring System (WEMS). The paper then argues that the WEMS model will be able to overcome the existing challenges hindering the information flow in a government framework.