The Earth is changing any minute we write, read, sleep or work. This change is not unconventional but threatening, being at an unprecedented pace like never before, that Humans and his associates may not be able to adapt to and vanish.
Yes, and this is a harsh reality in case the Climate action, resilience and above all, consensus fails.
Climate change is not the lone threat. Problem is it keeps on intruding and negating our little yet significant efforts each time, it sends its gifts like the recent Pandemic.
In order to deal with such anthropogenic disasters, it is important that leaders of the World may frame laws pertaining to Climate change and the relevant Institutions may ensure that everyone adheres to Nature’s laws, for one’s own benefit.
But what do these Climate Change legislations mean?
Do they hold any significance for Humankind on this ailing planet?
Who frames these laws? Do they differ with different perception?
Is there a dedicated international authority to check and safeguard these global laws? Or we just expect everyone to follow, with no teeth to the Law itself?
Climate litigation is an umbrella term for environment-related disputes encouraging legal practice and further climate change mitigation efforts from public institutions, such as governments and companies.
These legal frameworks for combatting climate change and promoting Climate action, have increasingly been available through worldwide legislations since the early 2000s.
It deals with one of these common five types of legal claims: Constitutional, administrative law against executive decisions, private law against erring Corporates, against frauds and human rights.
Paris Climate Agreement and inoculum for change
The Geneva Association report explains the relation between the adoption of the Paris agreement and impetus for accelerated climate litigations since, especially the domestic litigations (against self) those are ever-increasing in numbers, scope and geographical coverage.
According to it: “Between 1986 and 2020, 1,727 litigation cases were documented worldwide: 1,308 in the U.S. and 419 in other jurisdictions and regional and international courts. Importantly, more than half of the total recorded cases have been brought since 2015.”
“To date, the majority of cases have been brought against governments, but the number of lawsuits against corporate entities – particularly carbon majors – is on the rise.”
Several COPs like Kyoto protocol and Paris Agreement offer a robust framework for international climate change governance.
Now with revolutionary Dutch court ruling that dared to order the Shell group to cut their carbon dioxide emissions by a net 45% till 2030, things around the planet are bound to change.
The court referred to international treaties on climate change and human right law to reach such an exemplary decision.
We know that the agreement has no provision to legally bind entities, it is anyhow liberating that the court made Shell directly responsible for denigrating its immediate surroundings.
A TERI official explains about Paris Agreement: “The agreement itself does not comprise any penalty mechanism because that would have deterred countries from willingly participating and ratifying it. But, at the same time, the text of the Paris agreement is made in such a manner that it is understood that the commitments that the countries make are legally binding.”
Therefore, at times Paris Agreement may not only become a “reference document” in several country-specific climate change litigations but may also act like as the soul of legally binding agreements in itself.
What is needed to strengthen Climate Action?
Although Paris Climate treaty attained a milestone in making public aware and leaders awake to the public want of Climate justice, yet it has achieved less on ground.
No defined apex body exists or has been formed (not even in ideas) for climate rulings. No clear definition or consensus exists, among the members of international community in terms of what constitutes as ‘climate crimes’ and what needs to be done.
This is bare minimum to attain justice and five glorious-yet-critical years have passed since its adoption.
According to Advocate on record to SC: “There is much to be done in terms of international laws vis-à-vis climate change. Before we devise laws to penalize those adversely affecting the climate, there is a seminal thing that has to be addressed.”
“We need to have a broad consensus on what can be categorized as international environmental crimes because, unlike each country, which has some framework to answer that question within their jurisdiction, there is no international unanimity as to what especially constitutes a crime against the environment.”
“ICC, under Rome Statute, does rule on environmental damage if it is a part of a larger crime, like genocide or war crimes, etc. But, for exclusively environmental crimes done by corporates, or countries there is no defined international legal body that can try the case or enforce international climate litigation”.
We ask why now?
Because until now, all climate conventions and conferences, be it Kyoto, Paris or Marrakesh, have largely been focused on reducing greenhouse gases, or protection of the ozone layer, or bringing down the emission levels i.e. the protection and correction measures.
Its time we realize that Climate action has to be legalized in order to be implemented. A country can hurt its Climate or bigger Corporations would love to extract more profits with lesser regard to Nature’s needs. Who will check their deeds and criminalize? Accountability is a need therein.
Why to limit Climate change to a region or country?
“Climate change is a truly global threat to humanity – its effects transcend borders, continents and social and economic classes. The consequences of the actions by an individual of one country in one region of the world may be experienced, directly or indirectly, by those living in other regions around the globe,” says UNEP head of National Environmental Law Unit.
Did you know there are more than 1200 #climate laws globally? https://t.co/vVqCDpTdBo @SamFankhauser of @GRI_LSE pic.twitter.com/ndDC8NkDJa
— UN Climate Change (@UNFCCC) May 11, 2017
International adjudication is a pre-requisite to address climate change and commit to its correction because man-made borders do not bind nature.
“By strengthening multilateralism and taking a whole-of-society approach to environmental challenges, we recognize these differing global experiences and begin to more fully understand the true scope of the climate crisis.”
India and other countries for Climate Justice:
India addresses any of the climate crisis against entities under Environmental Protection Action or the pollution acts but the Climate concern gets addressed collectively under article 21 as “the right to Life”.
The SC along with gamut of responsible authorities question and try the accused against an attempt to denigrate the basic human living standards.
Writs, PILs and petitions are used to hold people accountable for their action or most times, inaction (by executives). However, the country lacks teeth and laws in order to check arbitrary legislations.
Parliament and its framed laws are supreme and can barely be directly addressed due to lack of Climate sensitivity amongst leaders.
Acceleration in the want of Accountability through Climate Justice:
A 20-fold increase has been observed in the number of global climate change laws since 1997 across the world, according to database furnished by the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment and the Sabin Center on Climate Change Law.
Global political discourse around Climate change has been aroused by greater number of Organizations working and protesting.
Since 2015, 47 new climate laws have been passed with countries putting their climate change frameworks in place.
“To reach 2C it’s probably a question of stronger laws, not more laws. Most of the countries we looked at have a framework to deal with climate change, that they have enacted.”
“What we have to do now is to strengthen those frameworks, implement stronger policies, have fewer exemptions, higher carbon prices, more focused support on energy efficiency, better prohibitions on land use.”
Persistent climate denial to fulfil selfish needs, has increased the risk of catastrophic global change.
The picture is clear now that harming the environment means harming the human lives and their livelihood with serious impacts on biodiversity.
So, in case we know a crime is ongoing, all we need is to bring these climate crimes to justice and enforce laws because this planet is not anyone’s private but a global asset, not worthy of losing.