Hybrid | Interpreting the Paris Agreement in its Normative Environment

This lecture will be delivered by Professor Lavanya Rajamani, as part of the Current Legal Problems Lecture Series 2023-24

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Hybrid | Interpreting the Paris Agreement in its Normative Environment

08 Feb 2024, 13:00 – 14:00

UCL Faculty of Laws
United Kingdom

Speaker: Professor Lavanya Rajamani (University of Oxford)
Chair: Professor Maria Lee (UCL)

About the lecture

There are three Advisory Opinions from International and Regional Courts due in the next year – from the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, the International Court of Justice, and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. At issue, broadly, in all three Opinions is the nature and extent of legal obligations that States have in relation to climate harms. The sub-text and context to these requests for Advisory Opinions is that the 2015 Paris Agreement, comprising primarily procedural obligations and obligations of conduct, and premised on national determination, is radically insufficient to resolve the existential climate crisis the planet is facing. This paper explores if this is indeed the case and argues that the 2015 Paris Agreement must be interpreted in its ‘normative environment’. The ‘normative environment’ includes the customary international law principle of harm prevention, other treaties, including human rights ones, and a set of principles of varying legal status but considerable operational relevance and guidance.

This paper examines specific obligations from the 2015 Paris Agreement and seeks to concretize and strengthen them based on this interpretative approach. While such strengthened obligations might yet be insufficient to decisively resolve the climate crisis, these nevertheless reflect a richer account of international legal resolve relating to climate change – one that is premised on an understanding of international law as a seamless web of inter-locking obligations rather than of particular treaties functioning as atomistic reflections of state consent in that area.

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Lavanya Rajamani is a Professor of International Environmental Law at the Faculty of Law, University of Oxford, and Yamani Fellow in Public International Law at St Peter's College, Oxford. Lavanya specializes in the field of international environmental and climate change law. She has authored and led several books and articles in this field, including the second edition of the Oxford Handbook of International Environmental Law (OUP, 2021), Innovation and Experimentation in the International Climate Change Regime (Hague Academy/ Receuil des Cours, 2020), and the ASIL prize-winning co-authored book, International Climate Change Law (OUP, 2017). She served as Coordinating Lead Author for the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report, is a member of the Climate Crisis Advisory Group, and has also served as a consultant and legal advisor, among others, to the UNFCCC Secretariat and Alliance of Small Island States. She was part of the UNFCCC core drafting and advisory team for the 2015 Paris Agreement. Lavanya is also involved in differing capacities, including in providing the evidence base, in current and prospective climate cases before national and international courts, as well as counsel to States. Her full profile is available at: https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/people/lavanya-rajamani

The Current Legal Problems (CLP) lecture series and annual volume was established over fifty five years ago at the Faculty of Laws, University College London and is recognised as a major reference point for legal scholarship.

You can attend this event in-person at UCL Faculty of Laws (Bentham House, 4-8 Endsleigh Gardens, London WC1H 0EG) or alternatively you can join via a live stream.

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Photo by Iván Tamás from Pixabay