I. Introduction The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol permit emissions trading between countries subject to limits in greenhouse gas emissions.1 One of the environmentally contentious aspects of the UNFCCC’s emissions trading scheme is the use of “offsets” (certified emission reductions or “CERs” under the UNFCCC) which permit regulated entities in developed countries (such as the UK or Germany, “Annex I Party”) to substitute taki...

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I. Introduction As government efforts to address climate change flounder in many countries and at the international level, environmental advocates have increasingly turned to courts to fill the void in climate change governance. Litigation seeking climate change mitigation or adaptation has been initiated in a number of jurisdictions and encompasses a broad range of legal forms.1 Action has been taken both against corporations emitting large amounts of greenhouse gases (GHG) to the atmosphere, a...

I. Introduction The theme of this paper is the multi-level governance of climate change, with a particular focus on the European Union (EU). There are two distinct aspects to this theme. The first concerns the relationship between the EU and its Member States in the governance of climate change (the federalism dimension) and the second concerns the relationship between the EU and the rest of the world (the global dimension). II. The Federalism Dimension Tensions between the EU and its Member Sta...

I. Introduction Climate change has prompted a wide array of policy responses ranging from the creation of carbon markets to adaptation programs for vulnerable communities. Few of these policies have invited the degree of controversy that surrounds biofuels, as emerging evidence of the adverse environmental and social impacts of biofuel production indicates that biofuels may not be the climate change panacea that policy-makers had made them out to be. There are growing concerns about how increase...

I. Introduction The first decade of this century saw a profound transformation in international relations, a key element of which was undoubtedly the rise of China as a major player. This did not so much result from a strategy of assertion in relation to security and diplomatic issues as from China’s economic modernization, which has strongly impacted the potential influence of the country, in particular in terms of trade, growth, foreign investments, and finance at the global level. Climate c...

I. Introduction This paper discusses the recent experience of governing a world city in the interests of climate change and sustainability. Unlike a legal perspective of climate change governance, this paper considers climate change issues as strategic sustainability policy through the lens of geography and politics. Strategic planning and the governance of growth and development in a city like London exemplify many of the socio-economic and physical problems facing world cities today. It provid...

I. Introduction The global climate system is warming, with an increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather and climate events such as heat waves, cold spells, heavy rainfall, droughts and tropical cyclones, and a rise in the sea level.1 Hong Kong is no exception. Records from the Hong Kong Observatory indicate a trend close to the global average increase. Between 1885 and 2006, the temperature in urban Kowloon rose by 1.5 degrees Celsius, at an average rate of 0.12 degrees Celsius ...

I. Introduction The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change defines adaptation as “the measures taken in response to climate change, to reduce the adverse impacts or to take advantage of opportunities offered by such changes.”1 The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) 1994 includes several references to adaptation,2 but the term is not defined. The Subsidiary Body for Implementation makes support and funding decisions to assist developing countries with impact, vu...

I. Introduction The debate over responses to climate change often centres on the policy choice between the two dominant market-based mechanisms: carbon taxes and emissions trading (cap and trade) schemes (ETS). Where the political decision has been made to establish an ETS, either alone or in conjunction with a carbon tax, the taxation treatment of transactions under the ETS, which has the potential to support or distort the scheme, is often overlooked in the process of designing the scheme and ...

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In the Market The US States Are at it Again: Is that Reasonable? 1. Introduction Climate is a dead letter in Washington DC. There is no expectation that the 112th Congress will take comprehensive action on climate change. Nor can much (more) be expected from the White House. For those who anticipated that President Obama would assert American leadership on climate by reengaging in the international climate negotiations and overseeing the enactment of national climate change legislation, the situ...

International Anne-Sophie Tabau, Lecturer at the University Paris- Nord XIII, Research Associate at the Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches Administratives et Politiques (CERAP) One year after the resounding shortcomings of the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference, expectations for the Cancún Climate Change Conference, which took place from 29 November to 11 December 2011, were modest. The purpose of this meeting was mainly to restore confidence in the United Nation process as well as between Pa...

Environmental Justice and the Rights of Ecological Refugees by Laura Westra. London, UK: Earthscan, 2009. 302 pp., £65.00, hardback. Environmental problems such as climate change are increasingly posing severe challenges for vulnerable communities of the Global South. As a result, millions of people are forced to flee the deteriorating living circumstances. Meanwhile, their rights are not adequately protected through international law. The timely work Environmental Justice and the Rights of Eco...

I. Introduction The laws relating to climate change come from a range of existing international frameworks of treaties, institutions and procedures. These “regimes” include the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its associated instruments, the international trade regime, the heritage protection regime, the law of the sea regime, and environment regimes such as the Convention on Biological Diversity. This pluralistic and diverse set of rules and institutions is...

CCLR 2|2011 Editorial 133 Editorial This is the second special issue of the Carbon and Climate Law Review containing papers presented at a conference on “Climate Change Governance after Copenhagen”, held in Hong Kong in November 2010. The conference was jointly organized by the Law Faculties of the University of Hong Kong and University College London. In the first of our special issues, the papers examined the emergence of new sites of climate change governance at different levels of govern...

I. Introduction Successfully addressing global climate change depends on the achievement of emission reductions that are real and sustainable. While the international climate regime does not prescribe how emission reductions should be achieved, significant effort has been made to establish legal frameworks that create incentives for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and account for the global mitigation effort. In 1992, the international community adopted the United Nations Framework Conve...

I. Introduction The last few years have witnessed a flurry of diplomatic activity on climate change. In addition to the scheduled inter-governmental negotiations under the auspices of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC),1 further meetings, many at a Ministerial level, have been convened by the G-8, the Major Economies Forum, the UN Secretary General, as well as Denmark and Mexico who served as hosts to the fifteenth and sixteenth Conferences of Parties (COP) to the UNFCCC. The...

I. Major Challenges Facing the CDM When the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) was established under Article 12 of the Kyoto Protocol (the Protocol) in 1997, it was not clear at that time what the CDM market would look like during the first commitment period of the Protocol. Now the picture is much clearer. By the end of September 2010, almost 6 years after the registration of the first-ever CDM project on 18 November 2004, more than 2400 CDM projects have been registered, with expected annual av...

I. Introduction: Why Geoengineer the Climate? Despite modest progress at the 2010 Cancun climate change conference of the parties1 and recent figures demonstrating a slight reduction in overall global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2009,2 the fact remains that international efforts to limit GHG emissions have not yet achieved significant reduction in emissions or in their rate of increase. Indeed, some initial assessments3 of the 2009 Copenhagen Accord4 and 2010 Cancun Agreements5 suggest tha...