Confronting Climate Change: Leadership and Action in the Face of Scientific Uncertainty

Author(s):  
Sarah F. Trainor
Author(s):  
David Freestone

This chapter delves deeper into the development and structural organization of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which forms the basis of the climate change regime. As a framework, the Convention urges action to preserve human safety where risks are high even in the face of scientific uncertainty. Its overarching aim, however, is not to reverse the greenhouse effect but rather, to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. The Convention establishes a number of institutions to further its work: a Conference of the Parties (COP) that makes decisions necessary to promote the effective implementation of the Convention, a Permanent Secretariat, and two subsidiary bodies: the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) and the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI).


Climate Law ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 207-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalie L. Dobson

Amidst the lively discussion on legal fragmentation and climate change, this article seeks to highlight the windows for the potential interaction of jurisdictional and environmental norms. This is relevant for climate-protective trade measures, which, it is argued, are not exhaustively regulated by WTO law. Exploring the contours of ‘climate change jurisdiction’ in customary international law, the article considers how the traditional jurisdictional principles may be operationalized in the untested territory of cumulative and uncertain environmental harm. With their origins in criminal and economic law, the jurisdictional principles were not originally designed for these challenges. This paper argues that the environmental norm of precaution, which originated out of a need to respond to complex threats, should have a role to play. Precaution governs issues of state regulatory competence in the face of scientific uncertainty. Particularly in relation to questions of foreseeability and causation, this norm may be helpful in navigating the application of the abstract jurisdictional principles, providing opportunities for synergy in the crystallization of the climate change jurisdiction.


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.


Nature ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 580 (7804) ◽  
pp. 456-456 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judy Lawrence ◽  
Marjolijn Haasnoot ◽  
Robert Lempert

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert E. Keane ◽  
Lisa M. Holsinger ◽  
Mary F. Mahalovich ◽  
Diana F. Tomback

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alejandro Yáñez-Arancibia ◽  
John W. Day

The arid border region that encompasses the American Southwest and the Mexican northwest is an area where the nexus of water scarcity and climate change in the face of growing human demands for water, emerging energy scarcity, and economic change comes into sharp focus.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (8) ◽  
pp. 101-110
Author(s):  
N. N. ILYSHEVA ◽  
◽  
E. V. KARANINA ◽  
G. P. LEDKOV ◽  
E. V. BALDESKU ◽  
...  

The article deals with the problem of achieving sustainable development. The purpose of this study is to reveal the relationship between the components of sustainable development, taking into account the involvement of indigenous peoples in nature conservation. Climate change makes achieving sustainable development more difficult. Indigenous peoples are the first to feel the effects of climate change and play an important role in the environmental monitoring of their places of residence. The natural environment is the basis of life for indigenous peoples, and biological resources are the main source of food security. In the future, the importance of bioresources will increase, which is why economic development cannot be considered independently. It is assumed that the components of resilience are interrelated and influence each other. To identify this relationship, a model for the correlation of sustainable development components was developed. The model is based on the methods of correlation analysis and allows to determine the tightness of the relationship between economic development and its ecological footprint in the face of climate change. The correlation model was tested on the statistical materials of state reports on the environmental situation in the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug – Yugra. The approbation revealed a strong positive relationship between two components of sustainable development of the region: economy and ecology.


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