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5 CCLR 147 (2011)
Climate Change Law and Regime Interaction

handle is hein.journals/cclr2011 and id is 155 raw text is: CCLR 2~2011 Climate Change Law and Regime Interaction 147 Climate Change Law and Regime Interaction Margaret A. Young* The central international legal regime addressing climate change mitigation is the United Nations Framework Convention and its associated instruments. However, multi- ple international laws from other regimes, such as trade laws, are relevant: both because they are implicated in climate change and because they contain potentially useful tech- niques for the development of a low-carbon economy. This fragmented body of inter- national law holds key challenges for governance. Interaction between relevant regimes is stymied due to disparities in state-membership and closed and inaccessible decision- making. Drawing on insights from other areas of international law, the article argues that information exchange, inter-agency learning, experimentation, expert consultation, peer review and stakeholder participation are essential for climate change governance. I. Introduction The laws relating to climate change come from a range of existing international frameworks of treaties, institutions and procedures. These regimes include the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its associated instruments, the international trade regime, the heritage protection regime, the law of the sea regime, and environment regimes such as the Convention on Biological Diversity. This plural- istic and diverse set of rules and institutions is part of the general phenomenon of the fragmentation of international law, which has attracted the attention of those who seek to resolve predicted conflicts between international norms. However, many of the obligations of states that relate to climate change mitigation are not prima facie conflicting, but are rather overlapping or distinct. As such, the focus in climate change governance will not be on the conflict of norms, but rather on the existence and nature of fruitful interaction between existing Senior Lecturer, University of Melbourne Law School. The article has benefited from presentation and discussion at the Climate Change Governance after Copenhagen conference jointly organised by the Faculties of Law of the University of Hong Kong and University College London, 4-5 November 2010. An earlier version was presented at the Society of International Economic Law Conference in Barcelona, Spain, on 9 July 2010. The article forms part of a broader research project on regime interaction in international law. regimes in order to promote efforts for effective climate change mitigation. This article provides an overview of select inter- national laws relating to climate change, and exam- ines common responses to the challenges brought by the fragmentation of international law, as set out especially in the seminal 2oo6 study by the Inter- national Law Commission (ILC). It then considers alternative responses to fragmentation, and out- lines a research agenda that focuses on institutional and normative interplay in situations of ongoing diversity and overlap in climate change gover- nance. Regime interaction in climate change gover- nance draws on a range of principles and processes, and requires a reconception of the role of many actors, which include but are not limited to states. Intergovernmental organisations (IGOs) and their secretariats, non-government organisations (NGOs) and their members, and a range of participants affected by climate change issues, are argued to be central in promoting inter-regime learning, deliber- ation, cross-forum governance and stakeholder par- ticipation in the meeting of relevant regimes. II. Multiple Laws relating to Climate Change There are multiple sources and effects of climate change, and there are multiple ways to mitigate it. Legal responses have developed within particular CCLR 212011 Climate Change Law and Regime Interaction 147

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