Research Handbook on the Law of the Paris Agreement (Research Handbooks in Climate Law series)

✍ Scribed by Alexander Zahar (editor)

• Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
• Year: 2024
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 445
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This comprehensive Research Handbook sets out a systematic analysis of the Paris Agreement taking into account developments since it entered into force in 2016. It explores the treaty’s capacity, as an instrument of international law, to compel state action to address the universal threat of climate change.

Highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of the Paris Agreement in light of state practice, each chapter contains a critical examination of a separate aspect of the treaty in order to aid understanding of its legal force. Eminent scholars with experience in Paris Agreement law explore how the Agreement’s efficacy relies heavily upon the goodwill of states, sui generis domestic initiatives, forceful climate law at the domestic level, and other contextual factors such as international peace and cooperation. Acknowledging the weak legal substance of the Paris Agreement, the expert contributors propose new avenues of scholarly inquiry as well as new directions in the fight against climate change.

The Research Handbook on the Law of the Paris Agreement will prove beneficial for scholars, researchers, and students of law, environmental studies, and politics and public policy. Legal practitioners, ministries of foreign affairs, and international NGOs concerned with environmental issues and human rights will also benefit from the book’s practical implications.

✦ Table of Contents

Front Matter
Copyright
Contents
Contributors
Abbreviations
1. Optimism and pessimism about the Paris Agreement
2. Operational readiness of the Paris Agreement’s institutional framework
3. The legal principles of the Paris Agreement: familiarity in novelty
4. ‘Collective’ state obligation to achieve the objective of the Paris Agreement: can it bridge the gap between collective ambition and individual state action?
5. A legal standard for state mitigation efforts: is national discretion bound to shrink over time?
6. The Paris Agreement’s facilitative approach: a compliance-inducing design?
7. Ambition-raising and ambition-reducing features of the Paris Agreement
8. The Paris Agreement’s ‘Nationally Determined Contribution’: law and practice
9. The Paris Agreement’s contribution to the development of the law on adaptation
10. The use of elements of the Paris Agreement and IPCC reports in climate litigation
11. Is the Paris Agreement a human rights treaty?
12. The market mechanisms of the Paris Agreement and the Kyoto Protocol: a legal comparison
13. Constituent norms of the Enhanced Transparency Framework
14. The Paris Agreement’s Enhanced Transparency Framework: state practices and compliance challenges
15. Governing international climate finance and investment: the Paris Agreement and related international and transnational mechanisms
16. The European Union’s implementation of the Paris Agreement
17. Large-scale carbon dioxide removal under the Paris Agreement: toward a principled approach
18. Ensuring mutual supportiveness of the Paris Agreement with other multilateral environmental agreements: a focus on ocean-based climate action
19. Social movements and the Paris Agreement: an imperfect vehicle for incremental change?
20. Beyond the Paris Agreement: need for new thinking to tackle the climate crisis
Index