International Climate Change Law

by Daniel Bodansky, Jutta Brunnée, Lavanya Rajamani

Overview

This textbook, by three experts in the field, provides a comprehensive overview of international climate change law. Climate change is one of the fundamental challenges facing the world today, and is the cause of significant international concern. In response, states have created an international climate regime. The treaties that comprise the regime - the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and the 2015 Paris Agreement - establish a system of governance to address climate change and its impacts. This book provides a clear analytical guide to the climate regime, as well as other relevant international legal rules.

The book begins by locating international climate change law within the broader context of international law and international environmental law. It considers the evolution of the international climate change regime, and the process of law-making that has led to it. It examines the key provisions of the Framework Convention, the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement. It analyses the principles and obligations that underpin the climate regime, as well as the elaborate institutional and governance architecture that has been created at successive international conferences to develop commitments and promote transparency and compliance. The final two chapters address the polycentric nature of international climate change law, as well as the intersections of international climate change law with other areas of international regulation.

This book is an essential introduction to international climate change law for students, scholars and negotiators.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199664306
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	07/25/2017
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	416
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Daniel Bodansky, Foundation Professor, Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law

Daniel Bodansky is a Foundation Professor at the Sandra Day O'Conner College of Law and Senior Sustainability Scholar at the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability at Arizona State University. Bodansky is an expert on international environmental law. He has worked extensively on the international climate change negotiations, including as a senior negotiator in the US Department of State and as a consultant to the UN climate change secretariat and the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions. He co-edited the Oxford Handbook of International Environmental Law, and is the author of the Art and Craft of International Environmental Law, which was awarded the 2011 Harold and Margaret Sprout Award from the International Studies Association as the best book published that year in the field of international environmental politics.

Jutta Brunnée, Professor of Law, University of Toronto

Jutta Brunnée is a Professor of Law and Metcalf Chair in Environmental Law at the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto. Writing in the areas of public international law and international environmental law, she is co-author of Legitimacy and Legality in International Law: An Interactional Account, which was awarded the American Society of International Law's 2011 Certificate of Merit for preeminent contribution to creative scholarship. She is co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of International Environmental Law, Promoting Compliance in the Emerging Climate Regime, Implementation of International Environmental Law, and Climate Change Liability: Transnational Law and Practice. As Scholar-in-Residence in the Legal Bureau of the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Brunnée advised, inter alia, on matters under the Biodiversity and Climate Change Conventions. She was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2013.

Lavanya Rajamani, Professor, Centre for Policy Research

Lavanya Rajamani is Professor at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi. She was previously at Queens' College, Cambridge, where she was a University Lecturer in Environmental Law, and Fellow and Director of Studies in Law, and at Worcester College, Oxford, where she was a Junior Research Fellow in Public International Law. She specializes in international climate change law, and has worked extensively on the international climate change negotiations. Among other roles, she has served as a consultant to the FCCC Secretariat, as a negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States, and as a legal adviser to the Chairs of Ad Hoc Working Groups under the FCCC. She was part of the FCCC core drafting and advisory team at the Paris negotiations. She is author of Differential Treatment in International Environmental Law, and co-editor of Promoting Compliance in the Emerging Climate Regime, Implementation of International Environmental Law, and Climate Change Liability: Transnational Law and Practice. She also served as Rapporteur to the International Law Association's Committee on 'Legal Principles relating to Climate Change' that produced three Reports as well as Articles and Commentaries. She is scheduled to deliver a public international law course on 'International Climate Change Law' at The Hague Academy of International Law in 2018.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction2. Setting International Climate Change Law against the Backdrop of International Law & International Environmental Law3. Law-Making, Texts, Language, and Interpretation4. Evolution and Architecture of the International Climate Change Regime5. The Framework Convention on Climate Change, 19926. Principles of International Climate Change Law7. The Kyoto Protocol, 19978. Designing the post-2012 International Climate Change Regime9. Multi-level Governance of Climate Change10. Mapping the Edge: International Climate Change Law and Other Areas of International Regulation11. Conclusion - Emerging Trends in International Climate Change Law

Editorial Reviews

"the Bodansky, Brunnée, and Rajamani textbook, written by three of the field's top experts, provides tough competition and remains the key reference on international climate change law." — Kati Kulovesi, German Yearbook of International Law

"The authors have a long and illustrious record on climate change issues, and the reader would naturally expect to find therein the highest level of scholarship, set out in meticulous detail, and the broadening insight the practical involvement with climate negotiations brings to any doctrinal work. The final product delivers on each one of these points. ... the authors have produced a comprehensive analysis of a whole new area of international law, both discussing in depth the full extent of its regulatory content and debating its interface with the complex and polycentric context of the other international regimes that embrace and, ultimately, reinforce it. And, in spite of their concerns as to the transient nature of their research in a subject more than usually prone to the trials and tribulations of political controversy, they have indeed given us a tour de force on the matter. Highly recommended." — Maria Gavouneli, Yearbook of International Environmental Law

"This book is a comprehensive and authoritative account of international climate change law by three towering figures in the field. In addition to providing incisive legal analysis of the climate regime as it has evolved from the Framework Convention and Kyoto Protocol to the recent Paris Agreement, it offers a broader perspective on climate governance and the intersection of climate change law with other areas of international regulation. The authors have brought their unique blend of academic expertise and practical experience of the climate regime to produce the definitive work on international climate change law, and what will surely be viewed as an instant classic. Written in erudite yet accessible fashion, this is a must have for students, scholars and practitioners of international climate change law." -Catherine Redgwell, Chichele Professor of Public International Law, University of Oxford

"On the 'defining issue of our age', Bodansky, Brunnée and Rajamani offer the definitive guide to the history, process and substance of international law's effort to address climate change - and the prospects we face. Measured, authoritative and readable, to the Paris Agreement and, hopefully, beyond." -Philippe Sands Q C, Professor of Law, University College London

"I can think of no better team of "academic practitioners" to bring a balanced insight to this surprisingly complex and subtle area of international law. I am sure even those involved in these negotiations will find new nuance and insight in this book." - Jacob Werksman, Principal Advisor, DG Climate Action, European Commission

"In a foreword to this book, the authors remark that "international climate change law presents a moving target." Indeed, a field buffeted by sharp political controversies, entrenched economic interests, complex evolving science, global inequalities, and urgent advancing deadlines presents a formidable area of study. The authors rise to the challenge, bringing their many collective decades of experience to bear in developing a remarkably clear and cohesive overview of the field... We were particularly struck by the authors' capacity to weave both authoritative analysis of legal rules and a nuanced understanding of practical and political factors into a comprehensive and eminently accessible account. The elements add up to a timely and extraordinarily useful guide that will be relevant for scholars, practitioners, students, and legal architects alike." - ASIL 2018 Book Awards Committee

From the Publisher