UNFCCC defines climate change as: “A change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable periods.”
The IPCC, on the other hand, defines it as a variation in “either the mean state of the climate or in its variability, persisting for an extended period, typically decades or longer.”
Climate change, per se, refers to human influence, and climate variability is about natural forces affecting climate.
The difference between human-induced and natural climate change is essential because legal obligations can only subscribe to human behaviour.
No discipline has been researched as extensively as climate change and related issues. The adverse effects of climate change have hardly left any area untouched. Everything is in danger, from human health to the extinction of animal species, islands, deserts and agricultural lands. Equal in size are climate change laws, rules and policies to either reduce (mitigate) or take actions to adjust (adapt) to the effects of climate-induced changes.
The UN and other international multilateral organisations’ major responsibility is to reduce poverty, hunger, income disparity and climate change incidents. This list may not include the entire range of problems besetting the world, but these are some of the significant hurdles to sustainable development. Without solving them or at least mitigating their rate of occurrence, the world will always be in danger of civil unrest, even war, especially due to climate change-induced calamities.
Hundreds and thousands of people have already been displaced from their homes or, worse, killed due to climate-related disasters in present history. After the Paris Agreement, the onus of climate change is on everybody’s shoulders. It has set a goal for its member states to decrease the temperature to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels.
To achieve this ambitious goal, every state must “pursue domestic mitigation measures” and “undertake and communicate ambitious efforts” on the principle of urgency, equity and effectiveness. Article 4(4) binds developed countries to undertake an economy-wide emission reduction target while expecting developing countries to attain the same over time.
Enacting the national framework of climate laws is the only way to qualify as a significant contributor to achieving the Paris Agreement’s temperature goals.
According to a study published in Nature Climate Change 2020, every new climate law significantly reduces carbon dioxide emissions per GDP. The Climate Change Laws of the World database has observed, on average, a reduction of 1.79% in the intensity of national emissions three years after passing a new climate law.
Decarbonising the economy demands mitigation interventions to change not just how energy is generated but also how it is used. The real challenge, however, lies in implementing these interventions, which require broad participation, sustained political will, informed policy judgment, sophisticated legal acumen and enforcement at all levels of government. For example, building codes by local government and federal laws clamp down on pollutant emissions from the industrial sector.
Climate change law intersects with nearly every legal subject. It is all hands on deck — an array of institutions, dozens of federal and state agencies and federal and state courts in numerous jurisdictions contribute to decarbonisation efforts.
At the time of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, fewer than 60 laws were in practice. However, all 193 parties have incorporated at least one law to transition to a low-carbon economy. Approximately 2,203 laws and policies deal with mitigation, 1,338 with adaptation and 424 deal with disaster risk management. In addition, many laws are related to energy, transport, economy-wide issues, land use, and land use change and forestry.
Lately, the impact of climate change on human rights and food security has opened the possibilities of a new array of laws on gender equality and dignity of life.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 17th, 2024.
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