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.

As the threats posed by changing weather patterns are becoming more apparent, climate change law has emerged as an important area of law in its own right. This Handbook provides a comprehensive understanding of this growing subject, setting out the key institutions and processes, and featuring interdisciplinary insights from leading experts.

A synthesis of the relevant agreements, customary norms and ongoing discussions on the international law on climate change.

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.

Climate change is a grave and urgent threat to human and other life, Earth's ecosystem, global security, and economic well-being. The global community increasingly understands that business as usual is no longer an option. Debate about states' legal obligations to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions is still in its infancy. This seriously hinders progress through the political process or the courts. A group of legal experts has sought to fill this gap by drafting the Oslo Principles on Global Climate Change Obligations. The Principles identify states' reduction obligations and articulate a series of related obligations aimed at prevention. This book is an extensive commentary that further explains the Principles and their legal underpinning. The members of the expert group are: Antonio Benjamin, Michael Gerrard, Toon Huydecoper, Michael Kirby, M.C. Mehta, Thomas Pogge, Qin Tianbao, Dinah Shelton, James Silk, Jessica Simor, Jaap Spier (rapporteur), Elisabeth Steiner, and Philip Sutherland. (Series: Legal Perspectives for Global Challenges - Vol. 3) [Subject: International Law, Environmental Law]

Since 2010, a significant quantity of international climate change finance has begun to reach developing countries. However, the transfer of finance under the international climate change regime – the legal and ethical obligations that underpin it, the constraints on its use, its intended outcomes, and its successes, failures, and future potential – constitutes a poorly understood topic. Climate Change Finance and International Law fills this gap in the legal scholarship. The book analyses the legal obligations of developed countries to financially support qualifying developing countries to pursue globally significant mitigation and adaptation outcomes, as well as the obligations of the latter under the international regime of financial support. Through case studies of climate finance mechanisms and a multitude of other sources, this book delivers a rich legal and empirical understanding of the implementation of states’ climate finance obligations to date. The book will be of interest to scholars and students of international law and policy, international relations, and the maturing field of climate change law.

A solution to the problem of climate change requires close international cooperation and difficult reforms involving all states. Law has a clear role to play in that solution. What is not so clear is the role that law has played to date as a constraining factor on state conduct. International Climate Change Law and State Compliance is an unprecedented treatment of the nature of climate change law and the compliance of states with that law. The book argues that the international climate change regime, in the twenty or so years it has been in existence, has developed certain normative rules of law, binding on states. State conduct under these rules is characterized by generally high compliance in areas where equity is not a major concern. There is, by contrast, low compliance in matters requiring a burden-sharing agreement among states to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions to a ‘safe’ level. The book argues that the substantive climate law presently in place must be further developed, through normative rules that bind states individually to top-down mitigation commitments. While a solution to the problem of climate change must take this form, the law’s development in this direction is likely to be hesitant and slow. The book is aimed at scholars and graduate students in environmental law, international law, and international relations.

This book reviews the practice of shared responsibility in multiple issue areas of international law, to assess its application and development.

This ground-breaking volume provides analyses from experts around the globe on the part played by national and international law, through legislation and the courts, in advancing efforts to tackle climate change, and what needs to be done in the future. Published under the auspices of the British Institute of International and Comparative Law (BIICL), the volume builds on an event convened at BIICL, which brought together academics, legal practitioners and NGO representatives. The volume offers not only the insights from that event, but also additional materials, sollicited to offer the reader a more complete picture of how climate change litigation is evolving in a global perspective, highlighting both opportunities, and constraints.

A comprehensive doctrinal study of states' obligations on climate change mitigation, showing that obligations arise not only from climate treaties, but also from customary international law, unilateral declarations, and human rights treaties, and exploring the interactions between these multiple obligations.