Introduction to The Climate Change and Human Rights Symposium

• Pages: 01

Page 1

As a new year commences, climate change will continue to jeopardize the well-being of millions of people and the health of the planet. In February 2008, Transnational Law and Contemporary Problems (TLCP) hosted a symposium on Climate Change and Human Rights, and this first issue of Volume 18 of TLCP continues our exploration of the topic. The Editorial Board of TLCP is pleased to present pieces that analyze the ongoing climate change crisis and demonstrate the potential of international law to provide solutions.

Laura Westra, a panelist at TLCP's Climate Change symposium, analyzes contemporary climate change issues through the lenses of contemporary human rights analysis, jus cogens norms in international law, and Canadian criminal law. In her article, Ecological Integrity and Biological Integrity: the Right to Life and the Right to Health in Law, Westra argues that the international community must recognize the presence of comparable concepts in existing bodies of law through which eco-crimes may be prosecuted and must further develop internationally binding laws that address eco-crimes and their impacts on the integrity of human and environmental life. Westra asserts that the integrity of ecosystems is a foundational issue of human rights and should be directly and immediately addressed by the international community.

Jonathan C. Carlson, who also presented at TLCP's Climate Change symposium, addresses the emerging concept of side-payments as a potentially successful method for reducing international greenhouse gas emissions. His article, Reflections on a Problem of Climate Justice: Climate Change and the Rights of States in a Minimalist International Legal Order, examines side-payments, the "Pareto-optimal" and efficient solution, as a potentially "just" solution to the international greenhouse-gas and climate-change problem. He focuses on whether greenhouse gas-emitting states have an unrestricted right to emit such gases and concludes that there is no right to emit. As a result, side-payments cannot be a just solution to this international issue.

Elizabeth Burleson observes that the weather-beaten economy has become a wake-up call to the climate change crisis. Her article, Energy Policy, Intellectual Property, and Technology Transfer, concludes that a sound energy policy that addresses climate change will rely upon widespread transfer and implementation of environmentally sound technology. Burleson addresses the challenges to...