Law and Science, Together to Tackle Climate Change

Dundee Climate Conference 2019, a multi-disciplinary and inter-generational conversation between lawyers and scientists, opening new horizons for the adaptation of the law in regards to climate change

On the last weekend of September, law academics and professionals came together alongside scientists, economists, journalists and students at the University of Dundee in Scotland, to discuss the global issue of climate change within our current legal framework in Europe and the US, after the adoption of the Paris Agreement.

The conference, which lasted two days, featured key speakers from both law and scientific backgrounds, which included distinguished Justice Brian Preston, Chief Judge of the Land and Environment Court of New South Wales, Dean of law Hari M. Osofsky at Penn State University, the acting director of the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University, Professor Dr Friederike Otto, Professor of Law at Chapman University Deepa Badrinarayana and Physical Geography researcher and lecturer Dr Simon Cook at University of Dundee, among other notable speakers.

“Climate Change”, according to the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, refers to a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity, altering the composition of gas concentrations in the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods.

Over the last decade, we have been seeing its adverse effects and its impact on humankind, with the prediction of scientists at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations, that its effects will increase in adversity over time. Its effects on infrastructure, persons and the environment are already taking place, and it is up to the legal system to set the guidelines to limit climate change impacts and to deliver on the political promise of climate justice.

The conference, initiated and organised by Dr Petra Minnerop, lecturer at Dundee Law School, set out to analyse our current legal system and how it can be used for “corrective justice in the face of climate change”. When asked about what drove her to set up the conference, Petra expressed the need to have a multi-disciplinary approach and an open conversation when it comes to climate change. In order to tackle it full-on, getting scientists and lawyers in a room together is a good way to start. Including the new international LLM students of the School of Social Sciences, and other undergraduate and postgraduate students across the University and Scotland, is a further step towards promoting the scientific and legal understanding of climate change that is necessary for the deep societal changes that are necessary if the temperature goal of the Paris Agreement is to be met.

In her talk, Petra focused on the European Convention and Human Rights, defining the “European Consensus” and the need for a commitment that goes further than agreeing on a global temperature goal, using Human Rights to implement protection against climate change.

A common term that was discussed extensively during the conference was the use of “tort” law as a promising way to assess the need for liability and the need to identify those parties responsible for the direct and indirect effects of climate change.

The use of current open environmental law cases was also highlighted as potential means to put into practice innovative ways to adapt the law and the current legal framework to climate change justice. This would give the opportunity to develop new tools to assess this global issue by helping to create examples or models for others to follow and give way to the further development of the law in relation to climate change.

Chief Judge of the Land and Environment Court of New South Wales commented on the Paris Agreement, sharing his views stating that “Every entity has to take action when it comes to climate change and how developed countries have an obligation to take the lead”. The judge mentioned the “ripple effect” of litigation, presenting example cases of the Urgenda climate case against the Dutch government and the Juliana case. Litigation however, in cases where there is lack of data, as it is the case in most vulnerable countries, might increase inequalities and lead to a strong set-back effect.

Sophie Marjanac from Client Earth and Dr Rhoda Verheyen demonstrated the challenge of defining a ‘duty of care’ upon which a legal claim for enhanced ambition of governments could be based in practice.

The talks by Professor Deepa Badrinarayana and Dr Annalisa Savaresi, featured the use of constitutional rights and human rights law as a way to help climate change prevention and compensation accordingly, including the human rights obligations of so called ‘carbon majors’. They made clear that this doesn’t mean that they are the answer to the legal problem with climate change, but are novel tools to push the legislation towards action in the adverse effects of climate change. Lindene Patton explored litigation strategies of insurance law as driver for adaptation.

Dr Thomas Muinzer, lecturer in Energy Law at the Centre for Energy, Petroleum and Mineral Law and Policy at the University of Dundee talked about the legal tackling of climate change from a United Kingdom and Scottish level, defining Climate Change as a “novel, difficult, unique and unusual problem, which the law is [currently] struggling to deal with and accommodate to ”.

The impacts of climate change on glaciers in high mountain environments all around the world was also explored, and it means for the ~1 billion people who depend on these natural reservoirs as their primary source of drinking water. Physical Geography researcher and lecturer Dr Simon Cook at University of Dundee explained the work that scientists are currently undertaking, focusing on the Bolivian Andes and how the local people are responding to the dramatic loss in mass of these glaciated mountain ranges and adapting their ways to the rapid changing environment, through manual draining of artificial lakes to avoid floods.

Other conference highlights included looking at international treaties and how we can work to enhance them, as well as the use of economic schemes to favour renewable energy sources over fossil-fuel based. There were open discussions at the end of each block of lectures, finalising with a room full of clapping attendees and, although the topics explored had been somewhat heavy-weighted, there was a glimmer of hope in the way everyone had come together and gathered to talk about the way to obtain solutions to the current problems. Perhaps there are to be found some elements of a climate consensus which can be taken forward and explored in more detail in future research, and the conference with masterclass was a step forward in what could be a path to follow, working in partnership between the law and the science to tackle Climate Change.

Words by Conchita Fraguas Bringas