Law Commons^™

Beyond The North–South Divide: Litigation's Role In Resolving Climate Change Loss And Damage Claims, Maria Antonia Tigre, Margaretha Wewerinke-Singh

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

Within the international climate regime, legal aspects surrounding loss and damage (L&D) are contentious topics, implicating liability, compensation and notions of vulnerability. The attribution of responsibility and the pursuit of redress for L&D present intricate legal and governance challenges. The ongoing debates under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change are characterized by a pronounced North–South divide and have done little to provide tangible support to those most affected by L&D. This apparent neglect has prompted exploration of alternative avenues for climate harm redress. The burgeoning field of litigation for liability and compensation of climate harm holds potential significance …

Transnational Insights For Climate Litigation At The European Court Of Human Rights: A South-North Perspective In Pursuit Of Climate Justice, Melanie Murcott, Maria Antonia Tigre, Nesa Zimmermann

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

The global climate crisis is increasingly recognised as an issue of climate injustice, including because it is causing (and worsening) inequalities and human rights violations. Moreover, responsibility for emissions and vulnerability to climate impacts are not evenly distributed. They vary among and within states. In order to tackle these issues of justice both within and among states, litigants have taken to domestic and regional courts to engage in climate litigation. A body of transnational climate jurisprudence is emerging in which courts are increasingly looking to laws beyond their relevant state or region, engaging with the moral aims of human rights …

Ccsi Submission To The Special Rapporteur On Human Rights And The Environment: Investor-State Dispute Settlement (Isds) Mechanisms And The Right To A Clean, Healthy, And Sustainable Environment, Columbia Center On Sustainable Investment

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment

CCSI Submission to the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment on investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanisms and the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, submitted in June 2023.

Commentary: Nature-Based Insetting: A Harmful Distraction From Corporate Decarbonization, Nora Mardirossian, Jack Arnold

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment

Carbon offsetting is used worldwide on a massive scale, purportedly to mitigate climate change by capturing atmospheric carbon or by increasing or protecting carbon storage. Yet, in recent years, offsetting has been increasingly criticized as a strategy that can harm Indigenous peoples and local communities, exacerbate land inequality, and, paradoxically, worsen the global climate crisis. “Carbon insetting” has emerged as an alternative approach to offsetting that localizes nature-based solutions projects and other greenhouse gas removal activities within company value chains and has been adopted by major global brands such as Nestlé, PepsiCo, and Burberry. This commentary takes a deep dive …

Achieving Climate Justice Through Land Back: An Overview Of Tribal Dispossession, Land Return Efforts, And Practical Mechanisms For #Landback, Vanessa Racehorse

Faculty Scholarship

Due to the increasing pressures of the climate change crisis, federal and state governments are beginning to acknowledge that Indigenous-led stewardship and control over Tribal aboriginal homelands is a crucial component of addressing climate change. In the United States, Tribal nations have a long history of responsible land stewardship, with environmental conservation and respect for the world's biodiversity being an inextricable piece of Tribal customs, traditions, and knowledge. This Article strives to pay due respect to traditional land stewardship and its important role in the past, present, and future.

Part I of this Article starts with an overview of the …

Climate Choice Architecture, Felix Mormann

Faculty Scholarship

Personal choices drive global warming nearly as much as institutional decisions. Yet, policymakers overwhelmingly target large-scale industrial facilities for reductions in carbon emissions, with individual and household emissions a mere afterthought. Recent advances in behavioral economics, cognitive psychology, and related fields have produced a veritable behavior change revolution. Subtle changes to the choice environment, or nudges, have improved stake-holder decision-making in a wide range of contexts, from healthier food choices to better retirement planning. But the vast potential of choice architecture remains largely untapped for purposes of climate policy and action. This Article explores that untapped potential and makes the …

The Right To Development And Climate Justice: The Nigerian Approach, Ikeanibe Chiamaka Cynthia

LLM Theses

The individual concepts of the right to development and climate justice have been the subject of much literature. However, the intersection of both concepts remains an emerging discourse. This thesis considers how the implementation of each of the two independent concepts affects the full actualization of the other. It situates itself within the Nigerian jurisdiction to analyse how the implementation of the right to development hinders the attainment of climate justice and vice versa. It argues that the weak response to climate change has impacted the right of the people to reach optimum development. It further argues that the basic …

Panel: Climate Change And Climate Justice, Alice Kaswan, Michael B. Gerrard, Monica Esparza, J.B. Ruhl

Faculty Scholarship

This article is a transcript of a panel discussion from the 2022 Richmond Public Interest Law Review's Symposium on Environmental Justice.

Held V. State, Alec D. Skuntz

Public Land & Resources Law Review

On March 13, 2020, a group of 16 Montana children and teenagers filed a complaint in the First Judicial District, Lewis and Clark County against the State of Montana and several state agencies. These young Plaintiffs sought injunctive and declaratory relief against Defendants for their complicity in continuing to extract and release harmful amounts of greenhouse gases which contribute to climate change. Plaintiffs premised their argument on the Montana Constitution’s robust environmental rights and protections. The Defendants filed a motion to dismiss which the District Court granted in-part and denied in-part. Held provides a roadmap for future litigation by elucidating …

Intangible Cultural Heritage: A Benefit To Climate-Displaced And Host Communities, Gül Aktürk, Martha B. Lerski

Publications and Research

Climate change is borderless, and its impacts are not shared equally by all communities. It causes an imbalance between people by creating a more desirable living environment for some societies while erasing settlements and shelters of some others. Due to floods, sea level rise, destructive storms, drought, and slow-onset factors such as salinization of water and soil, people lose their lands, homes, and natural resources. Catastrophic events force people to move voluntarily or involuntarily. The relocation of communities is a debatable climate adaptation measure which requires utmost care with human rights, ethics, and psychological well-being of individuals upon the issues …

Before The Ice Disappears: Pursuing Climate Justice For Inuit Women In The Context Of Mining In Nunavut, Angeline Bellehumeur

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The Arctic’s rapid warming is increasing the potential for mining activity in Nunavut, and, consequently, Inuit women are increasingly at risk of experiencing the adverse and gendered impacts of mining, including gender-based violence. Through a theoretical framework influenced by feminism, Indigenous legal scholarship and legal anthropology, this thesis examines the flaws in the mining industry’s voluntary efforts to acquiring a social licence to operate and in the Nunavut mining regulatory regime, while also considering how the law can provide legal recourse through tort actions and Inuit Impact Benefit Agreements. In every instance, is clear that climate justice for Inuit women …

Spectacular Imaginations Of The Sinking Island, Emma Schneck

Senior Theses and Projects

As entire island nations slip beneath rising seas, how can we reimagine a political future where the effects of climate change are already in full force? In recent years, it has become increasingly apparent that there is a fundamental lack of legal protections for those fleeing environmental degradation and the effects of global sea level rise. This lack of protection is felt particularly strongly in the Pacific region, where many communities are faced with existential threats to their way of life and self-determination. However, despite this historic lack of support from the international community, the Pacific Islands states have continuously …

A Relational Analysis Of Enterprise Obligations And Carbon Majors For Climate Justice, Sara L. Seck

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

A coherent theory of climate justice must answer the question of “who owes what to whom, and why?” In this paper I consider this question with a focus on the contribution of business enterprises, in particular the ‘carbon majors’, to climate injustice. I will first introduce a relational approach to legal analysis, drawing upon the work of feminist and vulnerability theorists, Indigenous feminist theorists, and feminist corporate and international law theorists. This relational approach confronts the dominant yet unacknowledged prevalence of the bounded autonomous individual of liberal thought in diverse areas of law and policy, and offers a method not …

Human Rights, Environmental Justice, Social Justice, Faith Values And Ethics: Building Stronger Partnerships For The Common Good By Understanding The Differences, Theresa Harris, Leanne M. Jablonski, Sarah Fortner, Malcolm Daniels

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Partnerships between human rights practitioners, local communities, scientists, engineers, and health professionals have shown potential to address deeply rooted, systemic human rights concerns. These collaborations are essential for achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and for engaging the perspectives and expertise of all constituents. However, even when the individuals in these partnerships or the organizations they represent have common goals, their motivations, analyses, and solutions often come from different perspectives. Members of good will can inadvertently alienate one another when attempting to work together. The fields of human rights, social justice, environmental justice, and ethics have each developed their …

The Paris Agreement And Global Climate Litigation After The Trump Withdrawal, David Hunter

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

The article addresses the emergence of cases in many countries around the world that are addressing climate change by enforcing, or at least referring to, the Paris Agreement.

A Landscape Of Thermal Inequity: Social Vulnerability To Urban Heat In U.S. Cities, Bruce Coffyn Mitchell

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A combination of the urban heat island effect and a rising temperature baseline resulting from global climate change inequitably impacts socially vulnerable populations residing in urban areas. This dissertation examines distributional inequity of exposure to urban heat by socially disadvantaged groups and minorities in the context of climate justice. Using Cutter’s hazards-of-place model, variables indicative of social vulnerability and biophysical vulnerability are statistically tested for their associations. Biophysical vulnerability is conceptualized utilizing a urban heat risk index calculated from summer 2010 LANDSAT imagery to measure land surface temperature , structural density through the normalized difference built-up index, and vegetation abundance …

Recent Developments In Climate Justice, Randall S. Abate, Rachel Jean-Baptiste, Maria Antonia Tigre, Patricia Ferreira, Wil Burns

Journal Publications

Climate justice can be defined generally as addressing the disproportionate burden of climate change impacts on poor and marginalized communities. It seeks to promote more equitable allocation of these burdens at the local, national, and global levels through proactive regulatory initiatives and reactive judicial remedies that draw on international human rights and domestic environmental justice theories. Yet, efforts to define climate justice as a field of inquiry remain elusive and underinclusive; a recent book, Climate Justice: Case Studies in Global and Regional Governance Challenges (ELI Press 2016), seeks to fill that void by providing an overview of the landscape of …

Clean Electrification, Shelley Welton

Faculty Publications

To combat climate change, many leading states have adopted the aim of creating a “participatory” grid. In this new model, electricity is priced based on time of consumption and carbon content, and consumers are encouraged to adjust their behavior and adopt new technologies to maintain affordable electricity. Although a more participatory grid is an important component of lowering greenhouse gas emissions, it also raises a new problem of clean energy justice: utilities and consumer advocates claim that such policies unjustly benefit the rich at the expense of the poor, given the type of consumer best able to participate in the …

Clean Electrification, Shelley Welton

All Faculty Scholarship

To combat climate change, many leading states have adopted the aim of creating a “participatory” grid. In this new model, electricity is priced based on time of consumption and carbon content, and consumers are encouraged to adjust their behavior and adopt new technologies to maintain affordable electricity. Although a more participatory grid is an important component of lowering greenhouse gas emissions, it also raises a new problem of clean energy justice: utilities and consumer advocates claim that such policies unjustly benefit the rich at the expense of the poor, given the type of consumer best able to participate in the …

Revisiting Transnational Corporations And Extractive Industries: Climate Justice, Feminism, And State Sovereignty, Sara Seck

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This Article explicitly examines the relationship between climate justice, gender, and transnational fossil fuel extractive industries by drawing upon feminist theoretical insights. First, I provide an overview of the differential impacts of climate change on women and briefly review insights from select international legal scholars who have considered gender and climate change. Second, I describe the Philippines climate petition, a novel attempt to seek an investigation into the accountability of transnational fossil fuel companies for climate harms. Third, I examine three sets of issues arising in the Philippines climate petition and draw explicitly upon Karen Knop’s Re/Statements: Feminism and State …

Climate Justice, Daniel A. Farber

Daniel A Farber

Eric Posner and David Weisbach take the threat of climate change seriously. Their book Climate Change Justice offers policy prescriptions that deserve serious attention. While the authors adopt the framework of conventional welfare economics, they show a willingness to engage with noneconomic perspectives, which softens their conclusions. Although they are right to see a risk that overly aggressive ethical claims could derail international agreement on restricting greenhouse gases, their analysis makes climate justice too marginal to climate policy. The developed world does have a special responsibility for the current climate problem, and we should be willing both to agree to …

The Environmental Justice Implications Of Biofuels, Carmen G. Gonzalez

Carmen G. Gonzalez

Advancing Climate Justice In International Law: An Evaluation Of The United Nations Human Rights-Based Approach, Damilola S. Olawuyi

Florida A & M University Law Review

The term “climate justice” has been traditionally deployed by scholars to emphasize the need for international law to provide legal solutions for direct and disproportionate impacts of climate change on human life and survival, particularly in vulnerable communities. However, with emerging patterns of human rights violations, massive land grabs, forced displacements, marginalization, exclusions, and governmental repressions resulting from climate change response measures and projects (particularly clean development mechanism (CDM), and REDD+ projects), climate justice has increasingly gained a more expansive connotation. Human rights violations and climate injustices resulting from climate change projects have resulted in calls for an international approach …

Climate Change Meets The Law Of The Horse, J.B. Ruhl, James Salzman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The climate change policy debate has only recently turned its full attention to adaptation - how to address the impacts of climate change we have already begun to experience and that will likely increase over time. Legal scholars have in turn begun to explore how the many different fields of law will and should respond. During this nascent period, one overarching question has gone unexamined: how will the legal system as a whole organize around climate change adaptation? Will a new distinct field of climate change adaptation law and policy emerge, or will legal institutions simply work away at the …

Seven Principles For Equitable Adaptation, Alice Kaswan

Alice Kaswan

Given the inevitability of serious climate impacts, climate change adaptation is becoming an urgent priority. Policy makers at the local, regional, state, and federal level are struggling to determine how to parlay existing authorities and develop new measures to avoid future calamity.

Successful adaptation will require not only attention to physical infrastructure, but to the underlying socioeconomic conditions that strongly determine the severity of climate impacts. Given the importance of underlying socioeconomic factors, this essay argues that equity should be a central feature of emerging domestic climate adaptation initiatives. It suggests seven principles for achieving equitable adaptation, principles designed to …

Domestic Climate Change Adaptation And Equity, Alice Kaswan

Alice Kaswan

It is now commonly accepted that climate change will lead to sea-level rise, more extreme storms, heat waves, wildfires, changing weather patterns, and the spread of disease. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is necessary, but not sufficient. Global, national, and subnational adaptation measures to reduce climate harm are essential.

This article argues that equity should be a central feature of emerging domestic climate adaptation initiatives. It details how more frequent and intense “natural” disasters, long-term impacts on habitability, and public health threats will have unequal impacts within the United States. The article suggests seven principles for achieving equitable adaptation, principles designed …

The Second Annual Environmental Law And Justice Symposium Issue, Randall S. Abate

Florida A & M University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Climate Justice, Daniel A. Farber

Michigan Law Review

Eric Posner and David Weisbach take the threat of climate change seriously. Their book Climate Change Justice offers policy prescriptions that deserve serious attention. While the authors adopt the framework of conventional welfare economics, they show a willingness to engage with noneconomic perspectives, which softens their conclusions. Although they are right to see a risk that overly aggressive ethical claims could derail international agreement on restricting greenhouse gases, their analysis makes climate justice too marginal to climate policy. The developed world does have a special responsibility for the current climate problem, and we should be willing both to agree to …

Public Nuisance Suits For The Climate Justice Movement: The Right Thing And The Right Time, Randall S. Abate

Journal Publications

The climate justice movement seeks to provide relief to vulnerable communities that have been disproportionately affected by climate change impacts. Public nuisance litigation for climate change impacts is a new and growing field that could provide the legal and policy underpinnings to help secure a viable foundation for climate justice in the United States and internationally. By securing victories in the court system, these suits may succeed where the domestic environmental justice movement failed in seeking to merge environmental protection and human rights concerns into an actionable legal theory. This Article first examines the nature and scope of the climate …

Human Rights Implications Of Climate Change, David Hunter

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.