CSDLP Guest Lecture: Natalie Dobson - 'Interest balancing in international climate law: in search of authority'

CSDLP Guest Lecture: Natalie Dobson – ‘Interest balancing in international climate law: in search of authority’

16 May 2023, 3-4 pm

Hybrid: PH8 (Physics Building) & Zoom

As a super wicked collective action problem, climate change poses one of the most pressing challenges for international law today. Both the choice to act and not to act come at a cost, creating dilemmas for those tasked with determining equitable responses. This presentation will consider such climate interest-balancing from two interrelated perspectives, engaging with various notions of ‘authority’. While one is hard-pressed to identify a delimited field of ‘international climate law’, here the term is used loosely to refer to the wide variety of sources of international law that are triggered in the context of climate change responses. Key among these are the UN climate change agreements, the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement.

To start with, this presentation will explore the legislative jurisdiction of states for their climate responses. State jurisdiction concerns the regulatory authority of law and policymakers when designing climate protective measures. With their different policy priorities, not all states, or groups of states such as the EU, share the same level of climate ambition. For more ambitious actors, a key means of mitigating anthropogenic climate change is to regulate the production processes of goods and services to limit the greenhouse gases emitted throughout their lifecycle. Importantly, in doing so, individual regulators have strong environmental and economic incentives to engage actors beyond their territory. While potentially more effective, such measures risk infringing the regulatory freedom of other states, which have, for their own reasons, chosen either not to regulate a certain issue or to do so in a different way. This creates tensions with the principle of sovereign equality, as one actor interferes in the regulatory space of another, raising important issues for the equitable distribution of climate change burdens.

A second perspective considered is that of courts, which are increasingly called to adjudicate the appropriate division of burdens. The explosion of climate litigation often refers to international law as part of the basis of a particular claim before domestic courts. This raises two further dimensions of authority. A first is the question of whether judiciary has the authority to steer, or sometimes even instruct, the legislative branch of the state.  A second question relates to the authorities used by courts when interpreting the law. A particularly pressing issue is the legitimacy of courts’ use of climate science – in particular IPCC reports –  to define what are ultimately normative legal standards. Through legal precedent and borrowing, such early court practice can have a great impact on the development of both national and international law. It is then essential to reflect on trends in the current state of play, as well as the pathways forward.

If you would like to participate, please register via the zoom registration, indicating if you will be attending in person or online.