How Just is International Climate Law? The Case for Systemic Change

  • Eleanor Wolff

Student thesis: Doctoral ThesisDoctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Abstract

The climate crisis stands as one of the greatest challenges of our time, yet so far global responses to it have been far from adequate. We are already seeing the disastrous consequences of 1°C of warming – and our chances of staying below the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C target are rapidly diminishing. This thesis holds that the climate crisis raises fundamental questions of justice – the uneven distribution of impacts, the historical responsibilities of a select few actors and the structural barriers to change embedded within the global climate regime all require close, critical examination.
While there has been much debate amongst climate justice scholars about the global governance framework and its role in (not) addressing climate injustices, there has been less discussion within this literature about the international legal system’s responses. This thesis aims to address this gap by developing a novel normative framework of climate justice and testing its potential for critically reflecting on international climate law. The normative framework is defined by three key principles: the Beneficiary Pays Principle, the Intergenerational Justice Principle, and the Systemic Change Principle, which together operationalise a trivalent conceptualisation of climate justice that accounts for distributive, corrective and procedural justice concerns. This normative framework is used to explore three key legal fora – the International Court of Justice, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. By critically examining the existing legal landscape, this thesis aims to highlight how key international institutions and instruments pose serious obstacles to the pursuit of a truly just global response to the climate crisis. This thesis concludes that a new adjudicatory mechanism in the form of a Global Court for Climate Justice, which is functionally-oriented towards and informed by climate justice, constitutes a key step forward in addressing the climate crisis and its injustices.
Date of Award19 Mar 2024
Original languageEnglish
Awarding Institution
  • University of Bristol
SupervisorAlix Dietzel (Supervisor) & Margherita Pieraccini (Supervisor)

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