Linking Subnational Climate Change Policies: A Commentary on the California–Acre Process

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 425-437 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernesto Roessing Neto
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
International Law ◽  
Environmental Problem ◽  
Cap And Trade ◽  
Address Climate Change ◽  
Ongoing Process ◽  
General Overview ◽  
Climate Change Policies ◽  
Global Environmental

AbstractClimate change is a global environmental problem which has been addressed primarily at the multilateral level. However, national, supranational, and even subnational action on the issue has also sprung up. At the subnational level, California (United States) and Acre (Brazil) offer an interesting example of how domestic policies may be linked in order to address climate change. Based on a memorandum of understanding concluded in 2010, these two states have been working towards the possible linkage of their respective climate change policies, in essence providing a pathway for using emissions offset credits that are generated in Acre through reductions of forest-based emissions in the Californian cap-and-trade programme. Taking into account that this is an ongoing process, this commentary provides a general overview of the issue from the perspective of international law.

Contemporary Practice of the United States Relating to International Law

1993 ◽  
Vol 87 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-111
Author(s):  
Marian Nash
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
United Nations ◽  
International Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
George Bush ◽  
Environment And Development ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Contemporary Practice

On September 8, 1992, President George Bush transmitted to the Senate for advice and consent to ratification the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, adopted at New York on May 9, 1992, by the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee for a Framework Convention on Climate Change and signed on behalf of the United States at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro on June 12, 1992.

Part V Subject Matter, Ch.29 Climate Change

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rajamani Lavanya ◽  
Werksman Jacob D
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
International Law ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
Paris Agreement ◽  
Due Diligence ◽  
Address Climate Change ◽  
Rules And Principles ◽  
Harm Prevention ◽  
And Function ◽  
The Universe

This chapter provides an overview of international regulatory efforts to address climate change. It focuses on the UN climate change regime, which comprises the 1992 UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change), the Kyoto Protocol, the Paris Agreement, and decisions of parties under these instruments. However, the universe of climate change law extends well beyond the UN climate change regime. There are rules and principles of general international law, such as the harm prevention principle, due diligence, and state responsibility, which apply to climate change. There are treaty regimes and institutions, including those addressing other areas of international environmental law or other fields of international law, which intersect with, complement, and function to implement the UN climate change regime. There are also a multiplicity of rules, regulations, and institutions at the regional, sub-regional, and national levels that directly or indirectly address climate change, many of which have been put in place in response to the UN treaties.

Climate Change-related Displacement of Persons

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane McAdam
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
International Law ◽  
Internal Displacement ◽  
Address Climate Change ◽  
Political Incentives ◽  
International Borders ◽  
Refugee Law ◽  
International Refugee Law ◽  
Impacts Of Climate Change

This chapter examines the scope of existing international law to address ‘climate change-related displacement’, a term used to describe movement where the impacts of climate change affect mobility decisions in some way. It looks into the role of international refugee law, human rights law, and the law on statelessness in protecting people displaced by the impacts of climate change. The extent to which international law and international institutions respond to climate change-related movement and displacement depends upon: whether such movement is perceived as voluntary or forced; the nature of the trigger; whether international borders are crossed; the extent to which there are political incentives to characterize movement as linked to climate change or not; and whether movement is driven or aggravated by human factors, such as discrimination. The chapter also considers the extent to which existing principles on internal displacement provide normative and practical guidance.

scholarly journals Fighting for King Coal’s Crown: Business Actors in the US Coal and Utility Industries

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Downie
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Environmental Politics ◽  
Energy Sector ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Address Climate Change ◽  
Obama Administration ◽  
Global Environmental Politics ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
The Us

Over the last two decades, business actors have received growing attention in global environmental politics. In the context of climate change, scholars have demonstrated the capacity of business actors to directly shape outcomes at the national, international, and transnational levels. However, very little work has focused exclusively on business actors in the coal and utility industries. This is surprising, given that resistance from these industries could delay or even derail government attempts to address climate change. Accordingly, this article focuses directly on the preferences of business actors in the coal and utility industries. Drawing on interviews with executives across the US energy sector, it considers business preferences on two of the most important attempts by the Obama administration to limit emissions from coal: the Waxman-Markey bill and the Clean Power Plan. In doing so, it provides new insights about the preferences of these actors and the divisions within these industries that could be exploited by policy-makers and activists seeking to enact climate change regulations.

scholarly journals General and Partial Equilibrium Modeling of Sectoral Policies to Address Climate Change in the United States

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Pizer ◽  
Dallas Burtraw ◽  
Winston Harrington ◽  
Richard Newell ◽  
James Sanchirico ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Partial Equilibrium ◽  
Address Climate Change ◽  
Equilibrium Modeling

scholarly journals Climate Change and Law

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret A Young
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
International Law ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Consumption Patterns ◽  
Legal Action ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
Address Climate Change ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
Domestic Law ◽  
Education And Law

Climate change is a global problem. This characterisation has major consequences for international law, domestic law and legal education. Drawing on legal developments, scholarship and pedagogy, this article has three main claims. First, it argues that lawyers dealing with climate change require proficiency across different areas of law, not just the law that seeks to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Secondly, to better understand how these areas of law fit together, and how they should fit together, the article points to relevant theories, including ideas relating to fragmentation and regime interaction within international law. Thirdly, the article examines ways in which legal education can encourage ethical and moral evaluations as well as strategic awareness, especially to ensure that legal action to address climate change does not perpetuate inequalities and injustice within the community of states. Legal education and law have important roles in mitigating climate change and in fostering a sensibility that recognises the unequal burdens between and within countries. In training the arbiters of global destiny, today’s law schools must continue to critique the law’s relationship with modern production and consumption patterns. 

The Polluter Pays Principle as an Instrument of Municipal and Global Environmental Governance in Climate Change Mitigation Law: Lessons from China, India, and the United States

Climate Law ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-93
Author(s):  
Paul A. Barresi
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
Climate Change Mitigation ◽  
Environmental Governance ◽  
The United States ◽  
Global Environmental Governance ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
Polluter Pays Principle ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Change Mitigation

The disparate fates of the polluter pays principle (ppp) as an instrument of municipal environmental governance in the environmental law of China, India, and the United States illustrate how institutions and culture can shape its use. In China, essential elements of the Chinese legal tradition and an institutionalized devolution of power from the central government to local governments essentially neutralized the Chinese variant of the ppp in one important context by mobilizing certain culturally defined behavioural norms at the local level. In India, the Supreme Court has behaved in accordance with the socially revolutionary role intended for it by the framers of India’s Constitution by recognizing a maximalist conception of the ppp as part of Indian law, although other features of India’s unique legal culture and institutions have reduced the impact of this development. In the United States, the institutionalized fragmentation of the law-making process within the Federal Government has undermined even the implicit implementation of the ppp, to which US environmental statutes do not refer. The implications of these developments for the ppp as an instrument of municipal but also global environmental governance in climate change mitigation law flow less from the nominal status of the ppp in the laws of China, India, and the United States than from the unique institutional and cultural conditions that prevail there. The result is a case study in how institutions and culture can transform the implementation of a principle of environmental governance that at first glance might seem to be a simple exercise in economic rationality into a different exercise that is not simple at all.

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