(task) International climate change law in a bottom-up world | Publications at SEI

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climate change

> https://www.sei-international.org/ <https://www.sei-international.org/>
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> International climate change law in a bottom-up world
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> This article offers early reflections on how the Paris Agreement will ensure that Parties, over time, will achieve the goals set within it.
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> The adoption of the Paris Agreement was a triumph of diplomacy. It is now widely recognized that the agreement is a treaty under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties and that it puts in place legally binding obligations. Y <http://www.qil-qdi.org/international-climate-change-law-bottom-world/#_ftn2>et the Paris Agreement also leaves some key questions unresolved.
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> Notably, it remains unclear how the agreement will ensure that Parties, over time, will achieve the lofty goals set by the treaty, namely ‘holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels’. In other words, the operation of key features of what has been termed the agreement’s ‘ratcheting mechanism’ continue to hang in the balance.
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> More fundamentally, the Paris Agreement raises the question of what role international law still has to play in a world where ‘commitments’ have been replaced with ‘contributions’, and where compliance no longer needs to be ‘enforced’ but ‘facilitated’. In other words, what is the role of international climate change law in a bottom-up world?
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> This article offers initial reflections on all of these questions. It argues that it is important that Parties design the various review processes in the Paris Agreement in such a way so as to ensure a proper functioning of the treaty’s ratcheting mechanism. It further argues that the shift to a bottom-up legal architecture confirmed by the Paris Agreement offers an opportunity for scholars and practitioners to uncover and better appreciate the functions of international climate change law that go beyond ensuring compliance with legal obligations.
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> Read the article <http://www.qil-qdi.org/international-climate-change-law-bottom-world/> (external link to journal)