scholarly journals Climate Change: International Legal Regulation Development

2022 ◽  
Vol 16 (12) ◽  
pp. 177-184
Author(s):  
N. A. Sokolova

The paper is devoted to the development of international legal regulation in the field of combating climate change. Over the years, states, in the face of scientific uncertainty, have been trying to find ways to keep global warming at 1.5 °C by establishing international commitments of various configurations.When cooperating in the fight against climate change, additional substantive discussions arise, related, for example, to the implementation of international trade measures or the provision of human rights. However, the main direction remains the one covered by the context of sustainable development, ESG principles for business, government and society, strategies for energy policies of states, cooperation in adaptation and assistance to developing countries.Approaches to the international legal regulation of cooperation in the field of combating climate change began to form when the international community started to pay much attention to the international legal protection of atmospheric air and the protection of the ozone layer. As early as the preamble to the 1987 Montreal Protocol, the emphasis was placed on the potential climate impact of ozone-depleting substance emissions.The international legal regime established by the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, in fact, outlined guidelines for finding optimal forms of cooperation, taking into account changes not only in the state of the environment, but also in the economic agenda. The Conference of the Parties has been identified as the key institutional platform for cooperation. Currently in conjunction with the 1992 Framework Convention and the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement the Conference of the Parties provides the conditions for their implementation.

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 2538
Author(s):  
Manuel Arias-Maldonado

The pursuit of environmental sustainability has been affected by two significant developments in the last years. On the one hand, the Anthropocene hypothesis suggests that the human impact on the environment has increased to such a degree, that natural systems are now disrupted at a planetary level. The most dangerous manifestation of the Anthropocene is climate change, where there is need for greater urgency in the face of insufficient climate action. There are a number of scientists who currently warn of the possibility that failing to reduce the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere may render the Earth uninhabitable in the first place. A first goal of this paper is thus to ponder how the sustainability paradigm may be affected in the face of this threat and whether, in fact, sustainability may be displaced by “habitability”. On the other hand, some climate policies are eliciting the reaction of a populist movement—from Trumpism to the gilets jaunes in France—that opposes the rise of environmentally-related taxes and denies climate change or questions the severity of its effects. Both as a concept and as a policy goal, sustainability thus finds itself under double pressure: as it must focus on keeping the planet inhabitable, while the political opposition to measures directed towards decarbonization also increases. In what follows, the paper suggests that sustainability should be understood as a technocratic project to keep the planet safe for humanity rather than imposing a new way of life for all its inhabitants. This is not to imply that moral or ideological debate is to be curtailed, but rather to differentiate between achieving environmental sustainability and seeking the reshaping of socionatural relations.


2020 ◽  

Whereas democracy still seemed to be triumphantly sweeping the world before the turn of the century, today it finds itself under immense pressure, not only as a viable political system, but also as a theoretical and normative concept. The coronavirus crisis has underlined and accelerated these developments. There are manifold reasons for this, above all the fundamental changes the state and society have undergone in the face of globalisation, digitalisation, migration, climate change and not least the current pandemic, to name the most significant of them. This volume analyses the changes to democracy in the 21st century and the crises it has experienced. In doing so, the book identifies where action is needed, on the one hand, and investigates appropriate, up-to-date reforms and the prospects for politics, political communication and political education, on the other. With contributions by Ulrich von Alemann, Bernd Becker, Frank Brettschneider, Frank Decker, Claudio Franzius, Georg Paul Hefty, Andreas Kalina, Helmut Klages, Uwe Kranenpohl, Pola Lehmann, Linus Leiten, Dirk Lüddecke, Thomas Metz, Ursula Münch, Ursula Alexandra Ohliger, Veronika Ohliger, Rainer-Olaf Schultze, Peter Seyferth, Hans Vorländer, Uwe Wagschal, Thomas Waldvogel and Samuel Weishaupt


Author(s):  
Marian Bedrii

The article researches the functions and tasks of legal custom based on historical experience and the current state of legal life.The view represents that law and culture functions are realized through legal custom, as it is an important element of these phenomena.At the same time, it is noted that legal custom is characterized by a separate catalog of functions and tasks that need to be studied. Theregulatory, explanatory, protective, defensive, inflectional, reconstitutive, ideological-educative, identification-communicative, antimonopoly,and legal-resource functions of legal custom are analyzed. The administrative and organizational components of the regulatoryfunction of legal custom are highlighted. The preventive and restrictive components of the protective function of legal custom are cha -racterized. It is substantiated that these functions are inextricably linked with the tasks of legal custom.Based on the analyzed functions, the following tasks of a legal custom are allocated: the legal regulation of social relations; cla -rification of provisions of the legislation, acts of law enforcement, texts of agreements, terms and symbolic actions; legal protection ofpublic goods and values; providing opportunities to protect rights and freedoms; stabilization of the legal system, its protection fromill-considered and risky transformations; reproduction of the acquired legal experience in new conditions; ensuring the flexibility of thelegal system; influence on the worldview of the individual and society in general; determining the affiliation of the subject to a parti -cular community and maintaining communication between its members; prevention of monopoly in the legal system of a normativelegal act or other sources of law; formation of material for the systematization of law.It is argued that legal custom, as a social phenomenon, evolving in the process of history, performed a wide range of functionsthat correlated with its tasks. Not every period, people, or locality is characterized by a full set of analyzed functions and tasks, but itis worth noting the possibility of their implementation by the legal custom in general, as evidenced by past experience and the currentstate of legal relations. The results of the research, on the one hand, complement the understanding of the nature of legal custom, andon the other – prove the feasibility of further use of this source of law in modern legal systems.


Author(s):  
Anatolii Getman

The article examines the issues of legal protection of human life and health in the latest globalisation processes, which have covered all spheres of political, economic, financial, social, geographical and cultural life and are becoming a basic factor of humanity on the planet. These processes set new trends in the ecological development of the state, redefine the problems of environmental security due to the changing nature of the challenges and threats facing humanity. The unfavourable state of the environment and the need to ensure environmental safety require the adoption of adequate legal, organisational and other measures. It is believed that in these conditions a human, his life and health should be at the centre of the mechanism of legal regulation of protection and defence, environmental safety, especially the establishment of the legal status of citizens affected by the negative consequences of environmental danger and guarantees of such citizens. The state has a number of obligations to human to create conditions for his “environmental comfort”. Such obligations should be reflected in the environmental legislation of the respective states. Recently, urban areas have been becoming threatening, the uncontrolled expansion of which inevitably leads to disruption of the normal functioning of the biogeotic cover of the planet, and consequently – a negative impact on health and life of mankind and especially that part of it living in large cities or other cities. It turns out that the general unfavourable state of the environment makes new demands on environmental security, which in the context of globalisation and internalisation of environmental problems is becoming a dominant factor in global security, as the environmental situation worsens, requiring effective policies to improve it.


2019 ◽  
Vol 85 (2) ◽  
pp. 95-104
Author(s):  
V. M. Davydiuk

The organizational and legal provision of security of confidential cooperation in Ukraine has been analyzed. The information on modern problems of ensuring security of the Institution of confidential cooperation has been systematized. The risks arising during the confidential cooperation have been outlined. The author has raised the issue of keeping the balance in ensuring security of a confidant’s personality on the one hand and the need of procedural recording of the information obtained from the confidant on the other hand. Normative and legal regulation of protecting confidants in Ukraine and abroad has been compared. The problematic issues of guarantees for the protection of confidants in the Ukrainian legislation have been revealed; the ways to solve them have been offered. The protective mechanisms that in one form or another should be applied to the confidants have been analyzed: guarantees of social and legal protection, restrictions on the use of certain categories of persons as confidants, etc. The issue of ensuring the safety of the confidants after the cooperation with law enforcement agencies has been raised. The author has offered to establish appropriate security measures for such confidants, to determine the reasons and grounds for the application of such measures, and to outline the mechanism of the implementation of such measures at the regulatory level. The limits of permissible behavior of confidants during the fulfillment of crime counteraction tasks have been studied. It has been offered to supplement the Art. 43 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine with the norm that would extend the rights of persons who under the law, perform a special task by participating in an organized group or criminal organization, to confidants, who assist law enforcement agencies in preventing and/or investigating a serious or particularly serious crime. In the context of involving a confidant in accomplishing the tasks of criminal investigation, the author has offered to provide a separate, secret investigative (search) action, which, by analogy with the norm of the Art. 272 of the Criminal Procedural Code of Ukraine should be conducted according to the resolution of an investigator, agreed with the head of the pre-trial investigation agency, and the decision of a prosecutor.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 5-10
Author(s):  
Michele Nicoletti

In introducing the inspiration behind and aims of the new Rivista Italiana di Filosofia Politica (Italian Journal of Political Philosophy), launched by the Italian Society for Political Philosophy, this editorial explores the relationship between politics and philosophy. As does all philosophy, political philosophy arises from the desire to understand what is new and to question existing reality. Political philosophy is thus political in a twofold sense: on the one hand, it is an act of freedom vis-à-vis existing power or knowledge, and, on the other, it is an attempt to establish social relations based on discursive reasoning, and on open participatory mechanisms for decision-making. This dual political attitude is ever more vital in the face of challenges to contemporary societies, such as climate change, migratory movements, dramatic inequalities, and the apparatus of surveillance. Eschewing a philosophy of distraction and non-engagement, political philosophy (and this Journal) endorses the idea of another, “more civic”, philosophy, one which is committed to the opening of new spaces of personal and collective freedom. This Journal intends to nurture the dialogue between Italian and international philosophical-political communities, showing the richness of Italian discussion, and highlighting some of the most authoritative international scholars. 


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 11-16
Author(s):  
Michele Nicoletti

In introducing the project of the Rivista Italiana di Filosofia Politica (Italian Journal of Political Philosophy), launched by the Italian Society for Political Philosophy, this editorial explores the relationship between politics and philosophy. As with philosophy itself, political philosophy arises from the desire to understand what is new and to question existing reality. Political philosophy is thus political in a twofold sense: on the one hand, it is an act of freedom vis-à-vis existing power or knowledge, and, on the other, it is an attempt to establish social relations based on discursive rationality, and on open participatory mechanisms for decision-making. This dual political attitude is even more essential in the face of challenges to contemporary societies, such as climate change, migratory movements, dramatic inequalities, and the apparatus of surveillance. Avoiding the risk of a “philosophy of distraction or non-engagement”, political philosophy (and this Journal) endorses the idea of another, “more civic”, philosophy, one which is committed to the opening of new spaces of personal and collective freedom. This Journal intends to nurture the dialogue between Italian and international philosophical-political communities, showing the richness of Italian discussion, and highlighting some of the most authoritative international scholars. 


1996 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 469-481
Author(s):  
W.J. Eijk

The Netherlands was the first country in Western Europe to have a legal regulation on euthanasia. The law implies that euthanasia without a request by the patient (or surrogate) remains formally forbidden; how it enables the physician - who performs the euthanasia - to use the defence of force majeure which here implies a form of “necessity”. The necessity is defined as a conflict of duties: on the one hand the physician has the duty to respect the legal protection of life; on the other hand there should be the duty to relieve the patient’s suffering. These two duties would conflict when the usual means to alleviate the suffering are exhausted and the suffering could consequently only be taken away by terminating life. This conflict shows the weakness of the Dutch euthanasia regulation. There should be a legal objection to the generalization of an appeal for a defence of necessity; every offence, including euthanasia, can theorically come under article 40 of the Dutch Criminal Code concerning force majeure, but an appeal to force majeure is intended by it only for isolated cases. Notwithstanding the formal confirmation of the potential for punishment in order to make euthanasia easier to control, in practice, however, this does not appear to be the case. Finally, the appeal to the defence of necessity in a case of euthanasia is in conflict with the basic principles of the natural law. Viewed in the light of John Paul’s Encyclical Evangelium Vitae, it could be qualified as a further contribution to the present culture of death.


2021 ◽  
Vol 241 ◽  
pp. 04002
Author(s):  
Yang Mei

In the face of climate change, it is urgent to transform the energy system. Germany has played an important role in the development of renewable energy. Hence, it is necessary to figure out why Germany makes structural change in its energy sector in order to have a better understand on the current situation and the future development of renewable energy. Adopting the theory of interdependence, this paper analyzes the motivation of Germany’s energy transition. It demonstrates that Germany on the one hand endeavors to reduce its energy dependence on other countries and increase other countries’ dependence on it in the field of renewable energy, on the other hand. Thereby Germany would get more advantage in international negotiation and competition. This paper reveals the principle of interdependence in energy transition, which provides a new perspective to discuss the politics of climate change.


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