Jennifer M. Klein, Esq. Associate Director & Fellow A group of Belgian citizens initiated a lawsuit in April seeking to compel their government to take aggressive action against climate change. The group, Klimaatzaak, filed a summons in the court of first instance in Brussels, alleging that the federal and regional […]
International
Teresa Parejo-Navajas, Associate Professor of Law (Carlos III de Madrid University) To download the full paper, click here. Improving energy efficiency in existing buildings represents a great opportunity for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Numerous measures to increase efficiency and decrease emissions have been put in place in cities all around Europe […]
By Michael Burger Executive Director This past weekend the Italian coast guard reported saving some 3,700 people at sea on a smuggler’s boat. This was but one boatload of the more 30,000 people who have fled Libya this year and attempted to migrate across the Mediterranean to Italy. An estimated […]
The Columbia Law School Sabin Center for Climate Change Law has created a comprehensive database with links to climate laws and policies around the globe. The collection currently includes information for more than 100 countries, organized by continent. Researchers at the Sabin Center developed the database as a new resource for the climate change law […]
On February 5, a trial court in British Columbia awarded $50,000 CAD (roughly $40,000 USD in current exchange rates) to distinguished climate scientist Dr. Andrew Weaver, finding that a collection of articles had defamed him.[1] The judgment is controlling authority only within British Columbia, but it is still significant: the […]
The first comprehensive survey ever conducted of climate change litigation outside the United States has been released by Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. It finds that there is far more climate litigation in the United States than in the rest of the world combined, and that […]
Mark Bond Columbia Law School, Class of 2015 In 2011, governments around the world committed to deliver a new, universal, and binding greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction agreement for the period beyond 2020 by 2015. This agreement is to be adopted this December at the twenty-first Conference of the Parties to […]
Associate Directors Jennifer Klein and Jessica Wentz Working into the early morning on Sunday, negotiators from almost 200 nations finally reached an agreement after the two-week United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP) in Lima, Peru. UN officials were scheduled to release the agreement at noon on Friday. However, the […]