What Can International Law do to Address the Challenges of Climate Change: The Case of Sea Level Rise

Session 1 - International law and global and planetary change: power/impotence of law?

Chair: Olivier de Frouville, Professor, Université Paris Panthéon-Assas.

Abstract

Climate change stands as one of the greatest challenges facing humanity. In 2015 governments gathered in Paris and adopted the Paris Agreement which for the first time included a temperature target for States. Missing from the climate change framework, however, are targets and concrete commitments for addressing the multiple threats to the ocean and marine environment from climate change. These include ocean warming, sea level rise, ocean deoxygenation and ocean acidification. In 2019 the IPCC issued the first ever special report on the Ocean and the Cryosphere in a Changing Climate, which presented alarming scientific findings on the serious impacts of climate change on the ocean.
The 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, while considered to be the "Constitution for the Oceans," was adopted before climate change appeared on the international agenda and thus does not address it. Questions arise whether greenhouse gases constitute pollution under UNCLOS and whether the obligations of States under UNCLOS for protection and preservation of the marine environment include climate change. Recently, the Commission of Small Island States has presented a request to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea on these issues.
The presentation will examine the challenges, the gaps and the possible way forward for States to meet the critical challenge facing the ocean from climate change.

Nilüfer Oral

Nilüfer Oral is Director of the Centre of International Law at the National University of Singapore, member of the UN International Law Commission and co-chair of the Study Group on sea-level rise in relation to international law. She was an advisor and climate change negotiator for Turkish Foreign Ministry. She was a member of the law faculty at Istanbul Bilgi University.