The Advisory Opinion handed down by the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) on 21 May 2024 is truly remarkable. Its clarification that all anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHGs) emissions, from any source, constitute marine pollution has potentially far-reaching consequences. Under the United Nations Convention of the Law […]
International
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Introduction ‘Historic’ and ‘unprecedented’ are two adjectives that could easily apply to the advisory opinion rendered by the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) on May 21, 2024. Of course, these adjectives have also been used to describe many other recent judgments delivered on the topic of […]
On May 21, 2024, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) released its long-awaited advisory opinion on climate change. The opinion was requested in 2022 by the Commission of Small Island States on Climate Change and International Law, which asked ITLOS to opine on States’ obligations to […]
A long-standing conundrum of international environmental law is that the territorially-based, sectoral legal structures we have created to address environmental issues do not match the interconnected, interdependent nature of ecosystems. For many, this problem is writ large in the climate context. Whereas the science—synthesized in recent assessments and special reports […]
Introduction There has been a common question emerging in recent greenwashing cases across Europe: to what extent must companies provide a holistic impression of their business in their advertisements? Companies that highlight only the sustainable or ‘green’ parts of their businesses have come under fire from consumers, NGOs and rival […]
On 9 April the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) issued its first ever comprehensive decision in a climate litigation case. The judges of the Court’s Grand Chamber found that Switzerland was in breach of its positive obligations to protect the health, well-being and quality of life of Swiss citizens from the […]
Lawyers, bar associations, and law societies have an important but not fully recognized role to play in achieving the net zero goal in the Paris Agreement. Over the last few years, a unique collaboration involving the American Bar Association (ABA), the International Bar Association (IBA), the Brazilian Bar Association (OAB), […]
In Verein Klimaseniorinnen Schweiz and Others v Switzerland (“KlimaSeniorinnen”), the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) makes many general statements about the nature of climate change and different actors’ roles in addressing it. For example, ‘the Court notes that climate change is one of the most pressing issues […]