Climate Change, Environmental Justice, and the Evolution of International Legal Frameworks

Abstract

Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of contemporary societies, with global climate change having deep environmental, economic, social and legal consequences. Climate change litigation, increasingly, has come to the fore, as it is an innovative tool for holding others accountable, a form of environmental governance and a way of fulfilling climate-related obligations. At the same time, climate change has emerged as a central issue in environmental justice, raising awareness of the unequal burden of climate change on marginalised populations, and underscoring the importance of fair legal action. There has been no integration of environmental justice principles into the new climate legal frameworks, which are also growing at a very fast pace, resulting in unfilled legal, institutional and governance gaps.This qualitative study examines the history of climate change litigation, looks at the connection between climate jurisprudence and environmental justice, and examines the growing legal landscape of climate change-related disputes and the key challenges to climate change governance. It is a qualitative research design which employs doctrinal legal research, thematic analysis, comparative legal analysis, in-depth study of international treaties, environmental conventions, landmark cases of climate litigation, judicial decisions, policy documents and scholarly literature.The results show that climate litigation has emerged as a powerful tool of judicial activism and environmental governance that holds states and corporations responsible for climate harms. However, there are numerous obstacles, such as legal jurisdiction issues, disjointed legal systems, access to justice issues, and weak institutional resilience to climate vulnerability among vulnerable communities. The study also shows that, while human rights issues are increasingly being incorporated into human rights approaches, environmental justice issues remain absent from climate jurisprudence.The research adds to the literature of environmental law and climate governance by providing a comprehensive qualitative analysis of the new developments in law and a set of suggestions for more equitable and effective climate governance. The study finishes by mapping out the potential of using environmental justice principles to meaningfully contour into national and international legal frameworks for the future of climate litigation and global environmental governance.