As world leaders attend a signing ceremony at the United Nations in New York to approve the historic ‘Paris Agreement’ on climate change, IDLO highlights the crucial role the rule of law and climate justice policy issues - such as legal certainty, transparency, equity and liability – play in addressing climate change.
The signing – on International Mother Earth Day - is seen as the first step in implementing the treaty, which opens up an important opportunity for rule of law approaches to make a lasting difference in tackling climate change, from legal and institutional reform to access to climate justice.
With the Paris Agreement, opportunities emerged for the contribution of the law and governance community to tackling one of the most crucial global challenges facing us today.
The agreement itself and nearly all the nationally determined contributions contemplate legal and institutional reform; some also note the importance of human rights in diverse contexts.
IDLO continues to urge increased recognition of the vital role national legal and policy frameworks play in enabling effective climate change response. National legal frameworks can be the catalyst to ensuring that climate change response is calibrated to assist those most vulnerable to its impacts.
IDLO maintains that without effective national laws, consensus secured at the international level can never be implemented.