Environmental Change And International Law

Explores normative and institutional innovation in international law as a response to the challenges to global order posed by rapid environmental change.

This textbook, by three experts in the field, provides a comprehensive overview of international climate change law. Climate change is one of the fundamental challenges facing the world today, and is the cause of significant international concern. In response, states have created an international climate regime. The treaties that comprise the regime - the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and the 2015 Paris Agreement establish a system of governance to address climate change and its impacts. This book provides a clear analytical guide to the climate regime, as well as other relevant international legal rules. The book begins by locating international climate change law within the broader context of international law and international environmental law. It considers the evolution of the international climate change regime, and the process of law-making that has led to it. It examines the key provisions of the Framework Convention, the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement. It analyses the principles and obligations that underpin the climate regime, as well as the elaborate institutional and governance architecture that has been created at successive international conferences to develop commitments and promote transparency and compliance. The final two chapters address the polycentric nature of international climate change law, as well as the intersections of international climate change law with other areas of international regulation. This book is an essential introduction to international climate change law for students, scholars and negotiators.

'UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called Climate Change "the defining issue of our era". It presents international law and lawyers with a wide range of novel issues, practical as well as conceptual. These challenges are addressed in this volume with great authority by many of the leading international law scholars of our generation. It is an important and distinctive contribution to the burgeoning literature on an issue critical for the future of our planet.' – David Freestone, George Washington University, US Climate change will fundamentally affect every area of human endeavour, including the development of international law. This book maps the current and potential impacts of climate change on the norms, principles, rules and processes of international law. This timely study brings together a group of leading scholars in their respective fields of international law to examine the impacts of climate change, and our responses to it, on the whole spectrum of international legal regimes, including those dealing with everything from climate displacement, human rights, and international trade and investment, to the oceans, the environment, armed conflicts and the use of force, and outer-space. the volume also examines the impacts of climate change on the underlying principles and processes of international law including those relating to the making and enforcement of international law and to third party dispute resolution. the book shows that there is much more to dealing with climate change than negotiating one global climate change-specific regime. Other areas of international law can, and must, be included in the solution. In this way international law can maximise its coherence and its efficacy. This well-documented study will appeal to international lawyers, academics, policy makers, government employees, negotiators, practitioners, international legal theorists and anyone interested in climate change and how to maximise our international legal and policy responses to it.

This book explores the increasing concern over the extent to which those suffering from forced cross-border displacement as a result of environmental change are protected under international human rights law. Formally they are not entitled to admission or stay in a third state country, a situation that has been identified as an international "legal protection gap". The book seeks to provide answers to two basic questions: whether and to what extent existing international law protects cross-border environmental displacement, and whether and how existing formalized regional complementary protection standards can interpretively solidify and conceptualize protection for cross-border environmental displacement. The discussion outlines that the protection of the human person is not only an ex post facto obligation of states, but must be increasingly seen as an ex ante one. The analysis further suggests that the European Union regionally orientated protection regime can help states to consolidate an evolving protection paradigm of proactive and reactive measures being erected at the international level. It can also narrow the identified legal protection gaps. In so doing, it helps states to reconceptualise protection as a holistic and dynamic enterprise. This book will be of great interest to academics in law, political science and human rights, policy makers and civil society organisations both at national and international level.

This book is the first comprehensive assessment of the legal duties of states with regard to human induced climate change damage

Die zweibändige Buchpublikation ist ein erster akademischer Versuch das internationale Klimaschutzrecht auch im Zusammenhang internationaler Klimapolitik systematisch darzustellen. Internationales Klimaschutzrecht ist nicht nur ein neues Rechtsgebiet. Das Phänomen Klimawandel durchdringt öffentliches und privates Recht sowie nationales und internationales Recht in unterschiedlichster Weise. Hierbei entstehen neue Bereiche der Rechtsanwendung - sowohl formeller als auch materieller Ausprägung. In diesem Zusammenhang befasst sich die zweibändige Buchpublikation mit dem regimefragmentierten internationalen Recht und dessen vielfach überlappenden Governance-Rahmen. Gekennzeichnet durch seine Komplexität wird das internationale Klimaschutzrecht und insbesondere die Rechte und Pflichten von Staaten und internationalen Akteuren untersucht und gegenübergestellt. In zahlreichen fachübergreifenden Beiträgen internationaler Experten erörtert das Werk die unterschiedlichen Rechts- und Governance-Regime sowie angrenzende völkerrechtliche und weltpolitische Fragestellungen den Klimawandel betreffend.Der erste Band befasst sich mit internationalen Rechtsfragen und den zugrunde liegenden Rechtsinstrumenten, welche den Klimawandel - eine der größten Herausforderungen unserer Zeit - betreffen. Dabei werden u.a. folgende Schwerpunkte gesetzt: Internationaler Klimaschutz und Völkerrecht; Klimawandel und Menschenrechte; verwandte welthandelsrechtliche Fragestellungen; Seerecht und der Anstieg der Meeresspiegel; gerichtliche Überprüfbarkeit und zahlreiche angrenzende Rechtsfragen wie zum Beispiel zu folgenden Themen: Klimaeindämmungsmaßnahmen, natürliches Ressourcen-Management und Klima-Engineering.Der zweite Band beleuchtet, ausgehend von dem Rahmenübereinkommen der Vereinten Nationen über Klimaänderungen, rechtliche, politische und transdisziplinäre Fragestellungen des Klimaschutzes im Spannungsgefüge internationaler Diplomatie und globaler Governance. Die Begrenzung der fortschreitenden Erderwärmung und der Schutz von Mensch und Umwelt vor den Folgen des Klimawandels werden u.a. im Zusammenhang folgender rechtlicher und gesellschaftspolitischer Schwerpunkte untersucht: Internationale Sicherheit; nachhaltige Entwicklung; Klimamigration; und Anpassung an den Klimawandel.

A perfect introduction to climate change law, this textbook offers students and scholars an overview of the international law governing this fundamental issue. It demonstrates how to interpret the language used in the applicable instruments and conventions, and sets climate change law in its broader international legal context.

An Ecological Approach to International Law shows that international environmental law is fundamentally flawed and not equipped to meet global challenges. The book examines international legal responses to global climate change by analysing key concepts such as the doctrine of state sovereignty, the law on state responsibility, environmental rights and common heritage of mankind.