«Nationally determined contributions to climate mitigation, trade and international law»

Absract :

Climate scientists claim that most oil, gas and coal reserves must remain unexploited to limit global warming increases to 2°C above pre-industrial levels. In 2015, parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) accepted the ‘Paris Agreement’, which aims to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change and endorses the target of a maximum temperature increase of 2°C. Each party must undertake climate mitigation measures to fulfil its ‘nationally determined contribution’ (NDC) to the global response, and the Agreement is not prescriptive about the use of non-renewable energy sources (such as oil, gas and coal) or renewable energy sources. This seminar analyses this legal development in the context of a globalised economy, where oil, gas and coal are traded between countries, and where governments often provide financial support for energy production; contrary to the spirit of the Paris Agreement, an estimated US$444 billion in subsidies are provided annually for the exploration, extraction and development of fossil fuels by G20 countries alone. Given that the sources of international law include a wide range of treaties such as the Paris Agreement, the UNFCCC and the World Trade Organization (WTO), the seminar seeks to understand the international obligations of energy exporting states such as Australia and Russia.

 Bio

Dr Margaret A. Young is Associate Professor, Melbourne Law School, and Programme Director of Fragmentation and Regime Interaction in International Law at the Institute for International Law and the Humanities (IILAH), Melbourne Law School. She joined Melbourne Law School from the University of Cambridge, where she was a Research Fellow at Pembroke College and the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law. She publishes and researches in the fields of public international law, international trade law, climate change law and the law of the sea. Her books include The Impact of Climate Change Mitigation on Indigenous and Forest Communities: International, National and Local Law Perspectives on REDD+ (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Regime Interaction in International Law: Facing Fragmentation (Cambridge University Press, 2012) and Trading Fish, Saving Fish: The Interaction between Regimes in International Law (Cambridge University Press, 2011). She holds a PhD and LLM (Hons) from the University of Cambridge and a BA/LLB(Hons) from the University of Melbourne and in 2016 was Director of Studies for Public International Law at The Hague Academy of International Law. She is currently based at the Law Faculty of the Saint Petersburg State University as a Visiting Professor.