Legal Form and Nature of the Paris Outcome

Climate Law ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 40-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian Oberthür ◽  
Ralph Bodle

This article analyses the legal form and nature of the Paris Agreement by exploring five core issues: (1) the status of the Paris Agreement as an instrument of international law; (2) the ‘housing’ of mitigation plans, actions, and targets within or outside the treaty; (3) the prescriptiveness and precision of the wording of specific commitments and provisions; (4) the nature of the commitments, in particular result versus conduct; and (5) the provisions to ensure accountability and promote effective implementation. We argue that the Paris Agreement constitutes an international treaty whose prescriptive and precise legal obligations are primarily procedural and focused on ‘nationally determined contributions’ (on mitigation) and the core transparency framework. Many other less precise and prescriptive obligations and provisions, including a number of rather programmatic statements, are best understood as establishing a political narrative that aims to guide the implementation and future evolution of the Agreement.

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 251-275 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benoit Mayer

AbstractThis article analyzes the international law obligations that arise in relation to nationally determined contributions (NDCs). It argues that distinct and concurrent obligations arise from two separate sources. On the one hand, treaty obligations arise under the Paris Agreement, which imposes an obligation of conduct on parties: they must take adequate measures towards the realization of the mitigation targets contained in their NDCs. On the other hand, communications such as NDCs may constitute unilateral declarations that also create legal obligations. These unilateral declarations impose obligations of various types, which may extend beyond mitigation. For example, they may specify measures of implementation or demand the achievement of a particular result. The potential ‘double-bindingness’ of NDCs should be a central consideration in the interpretation of international law obligations regarding climate change.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gianpaolo Balsamo ◽  
Richard Engelen ◽  
Daniel Thiemert ◽  
Anna Agusti-Panareda ◽  
Nicolas Bousserez ◽  
...  

The Paris Agreement of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is a binding international treaty signed by 196 nations to limit their greenhouse gas emissions through ever-reducing Nationally Determined Contributions and a system of 5-yearly Global Stocktakes in an Enhanced Transparency Framework. To support this process, the European Commission initiated the design and development of a new Copernicus service element that will use Earth observations mainly to monitor anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. The CO2 Human Emissions (CHE) project has been successfully coordinating efforts of its 22 consortium partners, to advance the development of a European CO2 monitoring and verification support (CO2MVS) capacity for anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Several project achievements are presented and discussed here as examples. The CHE project has developed an enhanced capability to produce global, regional and local CO2 simulations, with a focus on the representation of anthropogenic sources. The project has achieved advances towards a CO2 global inversion capability at high resolution to connect atmospheric concentrations to surface emissions. CHE has also demonstrated the use of Earth observations (satellite and ground-based) as well as proxy data for human activity to constrain uncertainties and to enhance the timeliness of CO2 monitoring. High-resolution global simulations (at 9 km) covering the whole of 2015 (labelled CHE nature runs) fed regional and local simulations over Europe (at 5 km and 1 km resolution) and supported the generation of synthetic satellite observations simulating the contribution of a future dedicated Copernicus CO2 Monitoring Mission (CO2M).


2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 183-188
Author(s):  
Igor Igorevich Mazurov

Legal practice is characterized by cases when legal regulation does not achieve its goals in view of ignoring the claims of legal actors. The article searches for ways to solve this problem. The concepts of legal regulation and legal impact are distinguished in the context of their connection with the mechanism of legal claim and the mechanism of its implementation. The main features of legal regulation of legal claims, which are largely due to the nature of the nature of legal claims, are highlighted. The content of legal claims in this case is the main subject of legal impact, while the object of legal regulation are social relations. Legal regulation of legal claims is carried out indirectly, that is, through the creation, modification or cancellation of the conditions for the recognition of their content as legal. The main legal form of recognition of legal claims is their formal legal recognition by authorized state bodies and officials. The conditions for recognizing legal claims presuppose, first of all, the formalization of a person’s legal qualities - legal capacity and legal active capacity, securing the status of a subject of law for a person. In the next turn, the conditions for the recognition of legal claims, in order to ensure acceptable and the most optimal models of social interaction, provide as one of the tools of legal regulation of the relevant subjective rights and legal obligations. At the same time, the excessive complexity of the procedure for the implementation of legal claims creates conditions for illegal ways to ensure the needs and interests. It underlines the pattern of strengthening the degree of legal influence on a legal actor if the subject of legal regulation and the subject of formal legal recognition of legal claims are united in the person of one state body or official.


Author(s):  
Chris Himsworth

The first critical study of the 1985 international treaty that guarantees the status of local self-government (local autonomy). Chris Himsworth analyses the text of the 1985 European Charter of Local Self-Government and its Additional Protocol; traces the Charter’s historical emergence; and explains how it has been applied and interpreted, especially in a process of monitoring/treaty enforcement by the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities but also in domestic courts, throughout Europe. Locating the Charter’s own history within the broader recent history of the Council of Europe and the European Union, the book closes with an assessment of the Charter’s future prospects.


AJIL Unbound ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 115 ◽  
pp. 80-85
Author(s):  
Daniel Bodansky

After four years of not simply inaction but significant retrogression in U.S. climate change policy, the Biden administration has its work cut out. As a start, it needs to undo what Trump did. The Biden administration took a step in that direction on Day 1 by rejoining the Paris Agreement. But simply restoring the pre-Trump status quo ante is not enough. The United States also needs to push for more ambitious global action. In part, this will require strengthening parties’ nationally determined contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement; but it will also require actions by what Sue Biniaz, the former State Department climate change lawyer, likes to call the Greater Metropolitan Paris Agreement—that is, the array of other international actors that help advance the Paris Agreement's goals, including global institutions such as the International Maritime Organization (IMO), the Montreal Protocol, and the World Bank, as well as regional organizations and non-state actors. Although the Biden administration can pursue some of these international initiatives directly through executive action, new regulatory initiatives will face an uncertain fate in the Supreme Court. So how much the Biden Administration is able to achieve will likely depend significantly on how much a nearly evenly-divided Congress is willing to support.


Author(s):  
XINRU LI ◽  
XUEMEI JIANG ◽  
YAN XIA

Focusing on the mitigation responsibilities and efforts, this paper provides a unified estimation of allowable emission quotas for a number of Asian economies to limit the global temperature rise well below 2°C based on a range of effort-sharing approaches. The study also explores the inconsistency between their planned emission pathways under the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and the allowable emissions to achieve the 2°C target. The results show that most of the Asian developing economies would be in favor of the Equal-Per-Capita and Grandfather criteria, for which they would obtain more allowable emissions quota. However, even with the most favorable criterion, official mitigation pledges represented by NDCs are far less enough for these developing Asian economies such as China, India, Vietnam, Thailand and Pakistan, as their emission pathways under NDCs significantly exceed the ideal pathways under all effort-sharing approaches. In contrast, most of the Asian developed economies have already planned reductions of annual CO2 emissions under NDCs, in line with their ideal pathways under the most favorable effort-sharing approach. However, their reductions of emissions require deep strengthening of deployment in low-carbon, zero-carbon and negative-carbon techniques, given the current growing trend of emissions for these economies.


2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Agustinus Kastanya

Indonesia has already agreed to and submitted Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC) to the UNFCCC, to reduce emission gases by 29% on its own and by 41% with outside help by 2030. This step follows the Paris Agreement (COP 21) to reduce world emission gases to prevent the earth warming by 20C . Maluku is characterized by small islands, narrow and short watersheds and needs an innovative approach to development. Multi landscape based development of small islands means using island clusters, watersheds, ecological conditions and socio-economic conditions. An agricultural concept for small islands based on multi landscape plans like green economics has been developed in 3 base concepts : (1) conceptual framework; (2) macro concept framework; (3) micro concept framework. The multi landscape format integrates water catchments and RTRWP/K which are organized into the smallest management units in accordance with indigenous rights. The complete landscape is managed using an agroforestry system for conservation of the watersheds, islands, cluster groups and seas. Thus, the agricultural concept can deliver productivity and services to meet the needs of the community and the environment as well as for mitigation of and adaptation to climate change.


Author(s):  
Iryna Osmirko ◽  
Ivanna Maryniv

Problem setting. Due to the fact that the constitutional norms determine the status of an international treaty, the binding nature of which has been approved by the parliament as part of national legislation, it is important to study the temporal effect of international treaties, namely their retroactivity. In general, the Vienna Convention contains a provision according to which an international treaty has no retroactive effect in respect of the States which are parties to it, except where the intention to give retroactive effect to the treaty follows from the treaty itself or the agreements of its parties. These exceptions to the general rule indicate the non-absoluteness of the latter, so it is appropriate to study the factors that determine the existence of retroactive agreements, as well as controversial and controversial issues that arise in this regard. Analysis of recent researches and publications. Scholars such as S.N. Ivanov, RA Kalamkaryan, M.A. Kapustina, II Lukashuk, OV Pushnyak and others. However, this area needs further study and analysis, given the existence of exceptions to the general provision on the lack of retroactive effect of international agreements. Target of research. Тo consider the conditions under which an international treaty has retroactive effect, to investigate the factors influencing the decision to grant retroactive effect and the issues arising in connection with the retroactivity of international treaties. Article’s main body. This study examines the non-absoluteness of the provision on the absence of retroactive effect of international agreements. Among the reasons that encourage states to anticipate retroactive effect – the interpretive or additional nature of the international agreement or the need to resolve the situation that arose before its conclusion. It should be emphasized that some agreements have retroactive effect by virtue of their object, which provides this retroactive effect, as agreed by the parties, although not explicitly stated in the contract. It is also not uncommon for certain rights and obligations to arise not because of an international treaty that has not yet entered into force, but because of customary norms that are enshrined in it. Conclusions and prospects for the development. The principle of no retroactive effect of an international agreement is not absolute. In each case, the reasons for the application of retroactivity must be decided by a judicial authority in the process of interpreting the contractual obligations. An important role in the possibility of retroactive application of an international treaty is played by its object or the co-existing customary norms of international law and the principles recognized by civilized nations as binding.


Author(s):  
Александр Борисович Диваев

В представленной статье рассмотрен ряд вопросов совершенствования регламентации процессуальных полномочий органов и учреждений уголовно-исполнительной системы Российской Федерации. Высказаны предложения по модернизации ряда норм, устанавливающих статус органов и учреждений уголовно-исполнительной системы и их должностных лиц как органов дознания. Рассмотрен круг проблем, связанных с более четким процессуальным регулированием механизма исполнения меры пресечения в виде домашнего ареста. Даны предложения по внесению изменения в уголовно-процессуальное законодательство, которые должны содействовать более эффективной реализации полномочий по контролю за арестованными со стороны уголовно-исполнительных инспекций. Сформулировано предложение по устранению терминологической неточности, допущенной в ст. 397 Уголовно-процессуального кодекса Российской Федерации. The article deals with a number of issues of improving the regulation of procedural powers of bodies and institutions of the penal system of the Russian Federation. In particular the proposals for the modernization of a number of rules establishing the status of the bodies and institutions of penal system, and their officials, as criminal investigation bodies. In addition, the range of problems associated with a more precise procedural regulation of the mechanism of execution of preventive measures in the form of house arrest. In this regard, proposals were made to amend the criminal procedure legislation, which should contribute to a more effective implementation of the powers to control arrested persons by the penal inspections. In conclusion, a proposal to eliminate the terminological inaccuracy in article 397 of the Criminal procedure code of the Russian Federation is formulated.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Justin Leinaweaver ◽  
Robert Thomson

Since the Paris Agreement of 2016, the international community’s main approach to addressing climate change is for states to determine their own commitments in a pledge and review system. Parties to the Paris Agreement formulate Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), which are documents that give details of their national policies and plans. They are free to formulate and present national policies as they choose, and as a result, there is substantial variation in the content and form of NDCs. This study presents a new framework for assessing and comparing the political meanings of these documents. The framework builds on two distinct ways in which NDCs can be understood. NDCs may be commitments to the international community and domestic actors. Alternatively, they may embody states’ negotiating positions in an ongoing process of national and international interactions. The framework consists of a set of thematic categories to which each sentence of these documents can be allocated. The application of this framework enables us to compare the political content of states’ NDCs systematically. The study demonstrates the validity of the framework by correlating its results with key characteristics of states. The findings also provide evidence for the two distinct perspectives on these documents.


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