Climate Change Blog

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16th January 2023

The Court of Appeal has held that if the Government’s interpretation of the Paris Agreement is “tenable” the courts will not interfere.

In a case concerning the UK Government’s approval of UK Export Finance’s investment in a liquified natural gas project in Mozambique, the Court of Appeal has held that if the Government’s interpretation of the Paris Agreement is “tenable” the courts will not interfere.

14th November 2022

October – November climate roundup : LURB Committee Stage highlights, a refusal, and a consent

Our latest climate law blog considers the proposed new climate clauses in the LURB, and recent local and national planning decisions involving emissions reduction targets. With COP27 in the news, the contrast between international aspirations and domestic realities is more than usually evident.

10th October 2022

Climate litigation and the rationality quagmire

The disconnect between overarching carbon reduction requirements in the CCA 2008, and national planning policy (and, ultimately, national and local planning decisions) continues to inspire litigation. No claim has yet succeeded.

3rd October 2022

Net Zero – all gain and no pain?

How the Government’s Net Zero Review, its response to the CCC Progress Report, and its revised Net Zero Strategy required by the High Court, will interact remains to be seen.

6th July 2021

Counting down to Net Zero?

The Sixth Carbon Budget covering 2033-2037 was brought into force on 24th June 2021.

25th June 2019

The Heathrow judgment: what we learned about climate change law

The High Court judgment in the Heathrow third runway case is arguably the most extensive judicial reasoning on current UK climate change law to date.

7th June 2019

Definitely not a Treaty, but a declaratory Global Pact for the Environment

The outcome from an intense set of intergovernmental negotiations in Nairobi was dimly predictable and all-too-familiar.

7th May 2019

UK Climate Change Committee calls for zero emissions by 2050

The UK will become the world leader in carbon emissions reductions to 2050 if advice provided to the Government by its Climate Change Committee is accepted.

11th January 2019

Could a Global Pact for the Environment improve the enforcement of international climate change norms?

In November 2018, the UN Secretary-General published a report on the hotly anticipated topic of a Global Pact for the Environment.

17th August 2018

Europe to see its very own ‘People’s Climate Case’ before the CJEU

Following the somewhat unlikely example of the US leading the way in 'People's' climate litigation, a similar action in Europe has just received the green light from Europe's highest court.

29th June 2018

IPCC set to warn that 2 degrees is no longer a “safe” degree of global warming

In a revised version of the draft earlier mentioned in this blog, details of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s latest analysis of the impacts of different degrees of warming have just been leaked into the public domain.

14th May 2018

Border carbon adjustments: a solution to carbon leakage?

In 2005 the world watched with eager anticipation as the EU initiated the world’s largest carbon pricing scheme, describing it as “a cornerstone in the fight against climate change.

14th February 2018

2018 and the great ‘ambition’ divide

Two recent items of international climate change news have placed into stark focus one of the issues set to take centre stage later in the year.

26th January 2018

Norway’s expanded oil exploration deemed lawful

An interesting feature of 2018 is that adults and children are divided by the millenium in which they were born. It is perhaps fitting that the judgment in the Greenpeace Nordic and Nature and Youth v Ministry of Petroleum and Energy (referred to by the claimants as The People v Arctic Oil) was delivered in the first week of the new year.

22nd December 2017

Climate litigation moves to the private sphere: the case of Lliuya v RWE AG

As highlighted in other recent posts on this blog, from the Netherlands to the USA to New Zealand, there is a clear trend for citizens to feel emboldened to take governments to court for a lack of action on climate change.

4th December 2017

The litigation effect of the Paris Agreement – New Zealand and Norway take the baton

As the dust settles from COP23, it seems clear that action on climate change remains insufficient to prevent dangerous levels of global warming. If political ambition is lacking, can litigation come to the rescue?

14th November 2017

COP23 and the current commitment gap – will Bonn galvanise action pre-2020?

Say “commitment gap” in the context of the climate change regime, and most people will probably think of the recent report by UNEP (the United Nations Environment Programme) highlighting the gap between Parties’ commitments under the Paris Agreement (the NDCs) and the emissions reductions required to meet the 2-degree temperature goal.

6th October 2017

Keeping Paris on track and tackling Trumpgate: the agenda for COP23 takes shape

Given the fragility of the legal architecture for tackling international climate change, there is no such thing as an ‘unimportant’ meeting in this arena.

28th July 2017

‘Utterly unprecedented’: A brief guide to America’s potentially game-changing climate case

Their lawyers fought it every step of the way, but now the US President, Secretary of State, Defence Secretary and nine federal agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency, will have to answer in court for the simple but far-reaching legal question posed by a group of young people from Oregon: ‘Do we have a right to life in a sustainable climate?'

19th May 2017

Can ambition run backwards? Trump’s post-truth Paris threat

As negotiators to the UNFCCC complete their meeting in Bonn ahead of November’s COP 23, Donald Trump and his administration are considering backsliding on US commitments to the Paris Agreement, effectively applying their doctrine of ‘alternative facts’ to the global climate deal.