Climate Change and International Law. Exploring the Linkages Between Human Rights, Environment, Trade and Investment

Mapping the relevant principles and norms of international law, the paper discusses scientific evidence and identifies current legal foundations of climate change mitigation adaptation and communication in international environmental law, human rights protection and international trade regulation in WTO law. It briefly discusses the evolution and architecture of relevant multilateral environmental agreements, in particular the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. It discusses the potential role of human rights in identifying pertinent goals and values of mitigation and adaptation and eventually turns to principles and rules of international trade regulation and investment protection which are likely to be of crucial importance should the advent of a new multilateral agreement fail to materialize. The economic and legal relevance of rules on tariffs, border tax adjustment and subsidies, services and intellectual property and investment law are discussed in relation to the production, supply and use of energy. Moreover, lessons from trade negotiations may be drawn for negotiations of future environmental instruments. The paper offers a survey of the main interacting areas of public international law and discusses the intricate interaction of all these components informing climate change mitigation, adaptation and communication in international law in light of an emerging doctrine of multilayered governance. It seeks to contribute to greater coherence of what today is highly fragmented and rarely discussed in an overall context. The paper argues that trade regulation will be of critical importance in assessing domestic policies and potential trade remedies offer powerful incentives for all nations alike to participate in a multilateral framework defining appropriate goals and principles.

Combining analytical frameworks to assess livelihood vulnerability to climate change and analyse adaptation options

Experts working on behalf of international development organisations need better tools to assist land managers in developing countriesmaintain their livelihoods, as climate change puts pressure on the ecosystemservices that they depend upon. However, current understanding of livelihood vulnerability to climate change is based on a fractured and disparate set of theories andmethods. This reviewtherefore combines theoretical insights from sustainable livelihoods analysis with other analytical frameworks (including the ecosystem services framework, diffusion theory, social learning, adaptive management and transitions management) to assess the vulnerability of rural livelihoods to climate change. This integrated analytical framework helps diagnose vulnerability to climate change,whilst identifying and comparing adaptation options that could reduce vulnerability, following four broad steps: i) determine likely level of exposure to climate change, and how climate change might interact with existing stresses and other future drivers of change; ii) determine the sensitivity of stocks of capital assets and flows of ecosystem services to climate change; iii) identify factors influencing decisions to develop and/or adopt different adaptation strategies, based on innovation or the use/substitution of existing assets; and iv) identify and evaluate potential trade-offs between adaptation options. The paper concludes by identifying interdisciplinary research needs for assessing the vulnerability of livelihoods to climate change.

Climate change and infectious diseases of wildlife: Altered interactions between pathogens, vectors and hosts

Infectious diseases result from the interactions of host, pathogens, and, in the case of vector-borne diseases, also vectors. The interactions involve physiological and ecological mechanisms and they have evolved under a given set of environmental conditions. Environmental change, therefore, will alter host-pathogen-vector interactions and, consequently, the distribution, intensity, and dynamics of infectious diseases. Here, we review how climate change may impact infectious diseases of aquatic and terrestrial wildlife. Climate change can have direct impacts on distribution, life cycle, and physiological status of hosts, pathogens and vectors. While a change in either host, pathogen or vector does not necessarily translate into an alteration of the disease, it is the impact of climate change on the interactions between the disease components which is particularly critical for altered disease risks. Finally, climate factors can modulate disease through modifying the ecological networks host-pathogen-vector systems are belonging to, and climate change can combine with other environmental stressors to induce cumulative effects on infectious diseases. Overall, the influence of climate change on infectious diseases involves different mechanisms, it can be modulated by phenotypic acclimation and/or genotypic adaptation, it depends on the ecological context of the host-pathogen-vector interactions, and it can be modulated by impacts of other stressors. As a consequence of this complexity, non-linear responses of disease systems under climate change are to be expected. To improve predictions on climate change impacts on infectious disease, we suggest that more emphasis should be given to the integration of biomedical and ecological research for studying both the physiological and ecological mechanisms which mediate climate change impacts on disease, and to the development of harmonized methods and approaches to obtain more comparable results, as this would support the discrimination of case-specific versus general mechanisms

Promoting Local Innovations: A tool for adaptation to climate change and sustainable development in Mountains

Throughout their history mountain communities have had to adapt to changing environmental and socio-economic conditions. They have developed strategies and specialized knowledge to sustain their livelihoods in a context of adverse climatic events and constant change. As negotiations and discussions on climate change emphasize the critical need for locally relevant and community owned adaptation strategies, there is a need for new tools to capitalize on this local knowledge and endogenous potential for innovation. The toolkit Promoting Local Innovation (PLI) was designed by the Centre for Development and Environment (CDE) of the University of Bern, Switzerland, to facilitate a participatory social learning process which identifies locally available innovations that can be implemented for community development. It is based on interactive pedagogy and joint learning among different stakeholders in the local context. The tried-and-tested tool was developed in the Andean region in 2004, and then used in International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) climate change adaptation projects in Thailand, Burkina Faso, Senegal, and Chile. These experiences showed that PLI can be used to involve all relevant stakeholders in establishing strategies and actions needed for rural communities to adapt to climate change impacts, while building on local innovation potential and promoting local ownership