International Law In The Era Of Climate Change

‘This volume offers an original and thought-provoking analysis of the impact of climate change across international law. The book convincingly shows how the legal regulation of climate change has affected the content and structure of international law as a whole. A must-read for everyone interested in current challenges to international law.’
– Wouter G. Werner, VU University Amsterdam, the Netherlands

‘UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called climate change “the defining issue of our era”. It presents international law and lawyers with a wide range of novel issues, practical as well as conceptual. These challenges are addressed in this volume with great authority by many of the leading international law scholars of our generation. It is an important and distinctive contribution to the burgeoning literature on an issue critical for the future of our planet.’
– David Freestone, George Washington University, US

Climate change will fundamentally affect every area of human endeavour, including the development of international law. This book maps the current and potential impacts of climate change on the norms, principles, rules and processes of international law.

This timely study brings together a group of leading scholars in their respective fields of international law to examine the impacts of climate change, and our responses to it, on the whole spectrum of international legal regimes, including those dealing with everything from climate displacement, human rights, and international trade and investment, to the oceans, the environment, armed conflicts and the use of force, and outer-space. The volume also examines the impacts of climate change on the underlying principles and processes of international law, including those relating to the making and enforcement of international law and to third party dispute resolution. The book shows that there is much more to dealing with climate change than negotiating one global climate change-specific regime. Other areas of international law can, and must, be included in the solution. In this way international law can maximise its coherence and its efficacy.

This well-documented study will appeal to international lawyers, academics, policy makers, government employees, negotiators, practitioners, international legal theorists and anyone interested in climate change and how to maximise our international legal and policy responses to it.