International Environmental Negotiation as a Governance Technique
61
Finally,
the identification of the pattern of the renegotiation governance
of the conventional environmental regime
may take two directions. If rene-
gotiation takes the form of the amendment of the conventional regime,
then it variably concentrates on the above identified pattern-elements
constituting the conventional regime, dealing, mutatis mutandis, with
the modification or the innovative expansion of certain of its aspects. The
Contracting Parties may open any of these elements to negotiation (the
preamble, the definitional element, the scope of application, the associ-
ational framework, the management system and the accountability sys-
tem) whereas the final treaty clauses remain out the purview of renegoti-
ation. On the other hand, it is worth noting that, since the drafting of the
amendment of a conventional instrument exclusively refers to the amend-
ed part of the text, it is pertinent that a consolidated - even non-author-
itative - text should be promptly produced, especially when the amend-
ments are extensive. In fact, the practice of including only the amended
part of the conventional instrument as an annex to the Final Act and the
ensuing acceptance - through a ratification process - of the amended part
of the text by each Contracting Party may be a serious source of confusion
with regard to the understanding and the implementation the amended
conventional instrument as a whole. Faced with this problem, the Secre-
tariat of the Barcelona Convention system, almost within a year after the
completion of the amendment process of the Barcelona Convention sys-
tem, produced an informal document in two of the official languages of
the Convention (English and French) containing inter alia a consolidated
text of the amended Convention and its amended Protocols. However, its
value remains limited for two reasons: first, it has a non-authoritative sta-
tus and despite the lapse of a number of years a formal consolidated text
of these instruments is not as yet produced; second, the national adminis-
trations and the public of the vast majority of the Contracting Parties do
not have an access to an official consolidated text in their own language,
a truly worrying prospect for the operation and communication of the
Barcelona Convention system within the Mediterranean countries.
In case that renegotiation takes the form of replacement of the con-
ventional instrument, then it is clear that the preceded analysis of the cor-
responding part of the convention-constitutive governance applies mu-
