State Responsibility Climate Change And Human Rights Under International Law

The last decade has witnessed an increasing focus on the relationship between climate change and human rights. Several international human rights bodies have expressed concern about the negative implications of climate change for the enjoyment of human rights, and the Paris Agreement is the first multilateral climate agreement to refer explicitly to states' human rights obligations in connection with climate change. Yet despite this, there are still significant gaps in our understanding of the role of international human rights law in enhancing accountability for climate action or inaction. As the Paris Agreement has shifted the focus of the climate change regime towards voluntary action, and the humanitarian impacts of climate change are increasingly being felt around the world, accountability for climate change has become an increasingly salient issue. This book offers a timely and comprehensive analysis of the legal issues related to accountability for the human rights impact of climate change, drawing on the state responsibility regime. It explains when and where state action relating to climate change may amount to a violation of human rights, and evaluates various avenues of legal redress available to victims. The overall analysis offers a perceptive insight into the potential of innovative rights-based climate actions to shape climate and energy policies around the world.

The last decade has witnessed an increasing focus on the relationship between climate change and human rights. Several international human rights bodies have expressed concern about the negative implications of climate change for the enjoyment of human rights, and the Paris Agreement is the first multilateral climate agreement to refer explicitly to states' human rights obligations in connection with climate change. Yet despite this, there are still significant gaps in our understanding of the role of international human rights law in enhancing accountability for climate action or inaction. As the Paris Agreement has shifted the focus of the climate change regime towards voluntary action, and the humanitarian impacts of climate change are increasingly being felt around the world, accountability for climate change has become an increasingly salient issue. This book offers a timely and comprehensive analysis of the legal issues related to accountability for the human rights impact of climate change, drawing on the state responsibility regime. It explains when and where state action relating to climate change may amount to a violation of human rights, and evaluates various avenues of legal redress available to victims. The overall analysis offers a perceptive insight into the potential of innovative rights-based climate actions to shape climate and energy policies around the world.

'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 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.

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.

This Study explores arguments about the impact of climate change on human rights, examining the international legal frameworks governing human rights and climate change and identifying the relevant synergies and tensions between them. It considers arguments about (i) the human rights impacts of climate change at a macro level and how these impacts are spread disparately across countries; (ii) how climate change impacts human rights enjoyment within states and the equity and discrimination dimensions of those disparate impacts; and (iii) the role of international legal frameworks and mechanisms, including human rights instruments, particularly in the context of supporting developing countries’ adaptation efforts. The Study surveys the interface of human rights and climate change from the perspective of public international law. It builds upon the work that has been carried out on this interface by reviewing the legal issues it raises and complementing existing analyses by providing a comprehensive legal overview of the area and a focus on obligations upon States and other actors connected with climate change. The objective has therefore been to contribute to the global debate on climate change and human rights by offering a review of the legal dimensions of this interface as well as a survey of the sources of public international law potentially relevant to climate change and human rights in order to facilitate an understanding of what is meant, in legal terms, by “human rights impacts of climate change” and help identify ways in which international law can respond to this interaction.