Climate Law & Governance Lecture 'Negotiating the Paris Rulebook: Issues, Options and Challenges'

Climate Law & Governance Public Lecture Series

Negotiating the Paris Rulebook: Issues, Options and Challenges

The negotiations for the Paris Rulebook, intended to flesh out the 2015 Paris Agreement and make it operational, are scheduled to conclude in December 2018. Negotiators are developing guidance on the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) submitted by states and elaborating a transparency framework in relation to their implementation, determining the conceptual architecture and mechanics of the ‘global stocktake’ process, and fleshing out a compliance and implementation mechanism. Yet many fundamental disagreements remain that need to be resolved in the coming months. One such issue is differentiation between developed and developing countries, which has been a long-standing site of conflict in the climate change negotiations. In Paris, states reached a delicately balanced compromise on this issue by side-stepping the Annex-based differentiation reflected in the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, and tailoring differentiation to the specificities of each area of the Paris Agreement. The devil, however, lies in the details, and this finely balanced compromise is in jeopardy in the Paris Rulebook negotiations. This public lecture will canvas the key issues and options relating to the Paris Rulebook negotiations, with a focus on the challenging cross-cutting issue of differentiation.

Professor Lavanya Rajamani is the 2018 Dickson Poon Distinguished Visitor to the Law School Climate Law & Governance centre. She is Professor at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi and an expert in the field of international environmental and climate change law. Her scholarship focuses on multilateral environmental treaty-making processes, differentiation, compliance, and the intersections of international environmental law with human rights. She has authored several books and articles in these areas. Her latest book, International Climate Change Law (OUP, 2017, co-authored with Daniel Bodansky and Jutta Brunnée) was awarded the ASIL Certificate of Merit in a Specialized Area of International Law. Prof Rajamani is scheduled to deliver a Public International Law course on the ‘International Climate Change Regime’ at the Hague Academy of International Law this summer. She served as Rapporteur of the ILA Committee on Legal Principles Relating to Climate Change (2008-2014) and has also served as a consultant to the UNFCCC Secretariat, a negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States, and a legal adviser to the Chairs of Ad Hoc Working Groups under the FCCC. She was part of the UNFCCC core drafting and advisory team for the Paris Agreement. http://cprindia.org/people/lavanya-rajamani