The Applied Constitutional Study Laboratory (ACSL) at the Dullah Omar Institute together with the Global Environmental Law Centre (GELC), University of the Western Cape, invite you to a webinar on Climate Change and Constitutional Law which forms part of the DOI NGC Webinar Series.

Topic: The future of public international law beyond the Paris Agreement
Date: Tuesday, 8 March 2022
Time: 18:00 CAT / 17:00 CET)
Platform: Zoom

REGISTER HERE

Background

Countries have debated how to combat climate change since the early 1990s. These negotiations have produced several important international law instruments, including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (1992), the (1997) and the Paris Agreement (2015). The Paris Agreement in particular is heralded as a landmark in the multilateral climate change process because, for the first time, all nations committed to undertake efforts to ensure that temperature increases are kept below 2 degrees and progressively reduced to 1.5 degrees Celsius by this century. Still, experts, activists and climate scientists remain concerned that the Paris Commitments are not ambitious enough and that states are in fact failing to meet their emission reduction commitments. Following further negotiations in 2021, nation states made new commitments through the “Glasgow Climate Pact”. While the new commitments are welcome, challenges and concerns remain for enforcing the evolving international legal framework under national and international law.

In this webinar we talk to Professor Christina Voigt, Department of Public and International Law, University of Oslo, Norway. Professor Voigt is the recently appointed Chair of the IUCN World Commission on Environmental Law and she acts as the Co-Chair of the Paris Agreement Implementation and Compliance Committee (PAICC). In her presentation, entitled ‘The Future of Public International Law Beyond the Paris Agreement’ Professor Voigt discusses the new climate commitments under the Glasgow Climate Pact and unpacks these in line with current and projected climate challenges and possible responses in the international legal order.

Speaker

Professor Dr Christina Voigt, Department of Public and International Law, University of Oslo

Hosts

Professor Derek Powell, Dullah Omar Institute, UWC
Dr Angela van der Berg, Global Environmental Law Centre, UWC