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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 March 2021
There is no doubt that the discourse around climate change has matured over the years and has become one of the central features of international relations. We all know of the international legal regime that has developed to deal with climate change, starting from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and finishing with the Paris Agreement. Climate change is also either at the core or on the fringes of many other international debates, from international security to international economic relations. In 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a (yet again) stark warning alerting to the risks of not moving towards a 1.5 degrees goal, rather than a 2.0 degrees as the Paris Agreement seems to be suggesting. The truth is that the trend countries are moving toward with their pledges in their nationally determined contributions is not going to meet the 2.0 objective, let alone the 1.5 degrees objective. Against this background, it is not surprising that sectors of society interested in pursuing stronger climate change policies have explored multiple governance routes to take forward their agenda. This has led to the emergence of a polycentric and multilevel governance in the field of climate change. It is within this greater picture that climate change litigation has become a key facet in the fight against climate change.
This panel was convened at 11:00 a.m., Thursday, June 25, by its moderator, Francesco Sindico of the University of Strathclyde Law School, who introduced the panelists: Hari Osofsky, Dean of Penn State Law and the Penn State School of International Affairs; Jolene Lin, Director of the Asia-Pacific Centre for Environmental Law at the National University of Singapore; Daniel Magraw, former Director of the International Environmental Law Office at the U.S. EPA and President Emeritus of the Center for International Environmental Law; and Laura Shay Lynes, President at The Resilience Institute (TRI) in Canada.
This piece builds on: Francesco Sindico & Kathryn McKenzie, Climate Change Litigation: Recent Trends, the Global South, Human Rights and Rights of Nature, 11 SCELG Dialogue (July 2020), athttps://www.strath.ac.uk/research/strathclydecentreenvironmentallawgovernance/ourwork/latestoutcomesfromourwork/scelgdialogues.
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2 Paris Agreement to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Dec. 12, 2015, TIAS No. 16-1104.
3 Climate Change and the UN Security Council (Shirley V. Scott & Charlotte Ku eds., 2018).
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5 IPCC Special Report on the Impacts of Global Warming of 1.5°C Above Pre-industrial Levels and Related Global Greenhouse Gas Emission Pathways, in the Context of Strengthening the Global Response to the Threat of Climate Change, Sustainable Development, and Efforts to Eradicate Poverty, Summary for Policymakers.
6 UNEP Emissions Gap Report 2019, at https://www.unenvironment.org/interactive/emissions-gap-report/2019.
7 Daniel H. Cole, From Global to Polycentric Climate Governance, 2 Climate Law 395 (2011); Gerd Winter, Multilevel Governance of Global Environmental Change (2006).
8 Hari Osofsky, The Geography of Emerging Global South Climate Change Litigation, 114 AJIL Unbound 61 (2020); Jacqueline Peel & Jolene Lin, Transnational Climate Litigation: The Contribution of the Global South, 113 AJIL 679 (2019); Joana Setzer & Lisa C. Vanhala, Climate Change Litigation: A Review of Research on Courts and Litigants in Climate Governance, WIREs Climate Change (2019).
9 Emily Beament, World Spins Towards Climate Breakdown, Ecologist (Mar. 10, 2020), at https://theecologist.org/2020/mar/10/world-spins-towards-climate-breakdown.
10 Charlotte Streck, Paul Keenlyside & Moritz von Unger, The Paris Agreement: A New Beginning, 13 J. Eur. Envtl. & Planning L. 3 (2016).
11 Aruna Chandrasekhar, The UN Climate Talks Ended in Deadlock. Is this Really the Best the World Can Manage?, Guardian (Dec. 21, 2019).
12 Lennart Wegener, Can the Paris Agreement Help Climate Change Litigation and Vice Versa?, 9 Transnat'l Envtl. L. 17 (2020).
13 Joel Jaeger, Europe Charts a Course for Sustainable Recovery from COVID-19, World Res. Inst. (June 2, 2020).
14 Comparative Climate Change Litigation: Beyond the Usual Suspects (Francesco Sindico & Makane Moïse Mbengue eds., 2021).