This article examines the impact of the Paris Agreement on the human rights of communities who are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of anthropogenic warming because of their geographical location, their spiritual and cultural connections with land and the wider environment, and their histories of colonialism, dispossession and other forms of exploitation. It focuses on two groups: forest dwellers, and inhabitants of small island developing states who are in danger of inundation as a result of rising sea levels. The Paris Agreement on climate change includes stand-alone articles on reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+), and loss and damage. The main argument in this article is that the inclusion of human rights in the Preamble to the Paris Agreement is a step forward, but is incommensurate with the scale and urgency of climate change.

In 2015, a Pakistani court in the case of Leghari v. Federation of Pakistan made history by accepting arguments that governmental failures to address climate change adequately violated petitioners’ rights. This case forms part of an emerging body of pending or decided climate change-related lawsuits that incorporate rights-based arguments in several countries, including the Netherlands, the Philippines, Austria, South Africa, and the United States (US). These decisions align with efforts to recognize the human rights dimensions of climate change, which received important endorsement in the Paris Agreement. The decisions also represent a significant milestone in climate change litigation. Although there have been hundreds of climate-based cases around the world over the past two decades – especially in the US – past and much of the ongoing litigation focuses primarily on statutory interpretation avenues. Previous efforts to bring human rights cases have also failed to achieve formal success. The new cases demonstrate an increasing trend for petitioners to employ rights claims in climate change lawsuits, as well as a growing receptivity of courts to this framing. This ‘rights turn’ could serve as a model or inspiration for rights-based litigation in other jurisdictions, especially those with similarly structured law and court access.

In recognition of the intrinsic links between climate change and human rights, many have argued that human rights should play a leading role in guiding state responses to climate change. A group whose human rights will inevitably be affected by climate action (or inaction) today are the members of future generations. Yet, despite their particular vulnerability, future generations so far have gone largely unnoticed in human rights analyses. An adequate response to climate change requires that we recognize and address the human rights consequences for future generations, and consider the legal, practical and theoretical questions involved. This article attempts to answer these questions with a particular focus on the Paris Agreement. It argues that the recognition of state obligations towards future generations is compatible with human rights theory, and that these obligations must be balanced against the duties owed to current generations. The article concludes with a number of suggestions for how this balance could be pursued.

The departure of the United Kingdom (UK) from the European Union (EU) (often referred to as ‘Brexit’) is likely to have a significant impact on the environment. In this article I argue against seeing the traffic as all one way. While there was a temptation for the advocates of staying in the EU, in the context of referendum campaigning, to portray the UK as a laggard pressured into positive environmental performance by the EU as leader, the reality is that the UK has also strengthened the EU’s environmental policy in some areas and seen its own weakened in others. Influence in both directions has also varied over time. The article goes on to consider core ‘Leave’ arguments around sovereignty and ‘taking back control’, exploring the implications of these in the specific context of environmental governance. In discussing subsidiarity, it concludes that leaving the EU will not remove the need for pooling some sovereignty over environmental matters at the international level and, in the context of devolution, at the UK level.

Under the no-harm principle, states must prevent activities within their jurisdiction from causing extraterritorial environmental harm. It has been argued elsewhere that excessive greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) from industrial states constitute a breach of this principle and instigate state responsibility. Yet, the relevance of general international law for climate change does not obviate a need for more specific international climate change agreements. This article argues that the climate regime is broadly compatible with general norms. It can, furthermore, address a gap in compliance with general international law – namely, the systematic failure of industrial states to cease excessive GHG emissions and to provide adequate reparations. As a compliance regime, the international climate change law regime defines global ambition and national commitments and initiates multiple processes to raise awareness, set political agendas, and progressively build momentum for states to comply with their obligations under general international law.

Illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing is a global problem, which threatens marine ecosystems in addition to putting food security and regional stability at risk. It is often linked to major human rights violations and even organized crime. Legal measures, such as introducing monitoring and surveillance systems or denying services to vessels engaged in IUU fishing, are often implemented at national and international levels to combat such practices. Academics and economists have suggested that IUU fishing might be discouraged equally well by taking the profit out of it. Building on this premise, this article analyzes the extent to which the availability of liability insurance contributes to the problem of IUU fishing. To this end, an empirical study has been carried out, which supports the contention that vessels suspected of involvement in IUU fishing have no serious difficulty in obtaining liability insurance from the market and insurance sector, thereby inadvertently facilitating IUU fishing. The authors conclude that to deter IUU fishing, access to insurance for those involved in it should be restricted. Some success can be achieved if certain steps are taken to improve the risk assessment procedures of underwriters. However, it is advocated that the most effective approach would be the reform of European Union or domestic legislation and putting providers of liability insurance under a clear positive obligation to refuse cover to those involved in IUU fishing.

The management of fisheries at the international level is no longer the exclusive preserve of states and international organizations. The proliferation of private certification initiatives – the reach of which defies territorial boundaries – has heralded an era of transnational fisheries governance. Whereas the interactions between private standards and national regulation have attracted scholarly attention, the function of international law in the context of transnational fisheries governance is largely unexplored. This article maps the interactions between international fisheries law and the most prominent among private certification standards, namely the Marine Stewardship Council Fisheries Standard and Guidance (MSC FSG). The article proposes a methodology to assess such interactions at the stage of norm development and argues that the interactions between the two regimes are multidirectional and complex. International law serves as a model for private standard setting and as a yardstick for private decision making. Conversely, the MSC FSG has acted as a model for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Ecolabelling Guidelines. Moreover, the MSC FSG may constitute a benchmark for resolutions adopted by regional fisheries management organizations. The MSC FSG, in incorporating international fisheries law, affirms the latter’s resilience as a global point of reference for the management of fisheries globally. Yet, at the same time, by prompting states to comply with their international obligations in order to secure market access for their fishing industry, the MSC FSG may be exposing the inability of international law to generate compliance autonomously.