International Environmental Law, Climate Change, and Intergenerational Justice (Executive Summary and Background Paper)

This background paper to the Climate Legacy Initiative project assesses whether existing international environmental law is adequate to address the challenge of global climate change. It considers both current treaty rules governing climate change and customary principles of international environmental law that might provide a legal foundation for political efforts to strengthen the treaty regime. It concludes that existing rules and principles, including human rights principles and principles of intergenerational justice, do not provide a strong legal basis for demands that states take serious action to mitigate climate change or to assist others in adapting to it. For that reason, it argues, the Climate Legacy Initiative should focus on promoting the development of new or strengthened legal principles and norms to provide a stronger legal foundation for the political effort to craft an effective international regulatory regime addressing greenhouse gas emissions and adaptation to climate change