Lucas Bergkamp on the Paris Climate Agreement and the Judiciary

Network member Lucas Bergkamp (Leuven) has alerted us to his post on EnergyPost: "The hidden trigger of Paris: why the climate battle will now be taken to the courts."  In the post, Lucas explores the possible consequences of failure to achieve the political objectives of the Paris Climate Agreement.  He argues that the saga could play out not in the arena of politics but in the courts -- and that this would represent a sharp threat to democracy and constitutionalism.

The first paragraph follows; the full version is available here.

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At the COP-21 in Paris, 195 countries negotiated a decision and an agreement on international climate change policy-making. To a significant extent, the decision and agreement overlap and address many of the same issues, with the decision often going into more detail in an attempt to begin implementing the agreement. The Paris Agreement covers mitigation, adaptation, as well as ‘loss and damage,’ a process aimed at addressing harms caused by climate change, and establishes processes for financing and technology transfer. With respect to mitigation, it sets an ambitious objective of limiting the global average temperature increase to well below 2 °C or even 1.5 °C. In pursuit of this objective, it establishes a procedural framework for future climate policy-making by the parties.

The post continues here.