Legal Aspects of Climate Change

Abstract

Climate change constitutes the greatest global long-term threat to the health of the planet. States have however, been slow to recognize the implications of climate change for the oceans—in contrast to the atmosphere and biosphere. The subordinate status of the oceans in the climate regime complex is perpetuated by the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (unfccc)1 itself, which pays scant attention to both the impacts of climate change on the oceans and the capacity of the ocean to mitigate climate change through its function as a sink for carbon dioxide (CO2). Scientific research now underpins an improved public and indeed policy understanding of the impacts climate change on the oceans: increased water temperature and its impact on ecosystems and species including coral reefs; sea level rise; and, ironically, a reduction in the capacity of the oceans to absorb CO2.2 An excess of CO2 in the oceans also leads to a distinct but connected challenge: ocean acidification, the lowering of ocean pH,3 which poses a particular risk to calcifying organisms and reef ecosystems.4 However, the development of regulatory responses has thus far been fragmented, with a strong emphasis on soft targets and obligations designed to fill and bridge the gaps between instruments with a mandate to address climate change and ocean acidification. Moreover, as the largest natural sink for CO2 the oceans also represent a potential or at least a partial solution for climate change. Mediating this tension between protection and exploitation, and the moral complexity underpinning actions designed to mitigate and adapt to climate change, will be one of the greatest challenges for the law of the sea in the twenty-first century. This