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15 CCLR 233 (2021)
Climate Justice under the Paris Agreement: Framework and Substance

handle is hein.journals/cclr2021 and id is 258 raw text is: CCLR 312021 Climate Justice Under the Paris Agreement: Framework and Substance Temitope Tunbi Onifade* The Paris Agreement is the first treaty under the global climate regime to mention 'climate justice' as a concept. Given this unprecedented legal turn of the concept, the article reports a sociolegal study of climate justice, framing and assessing the substantive policy issues arising from the post-Paris negotiations of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the Unit- ed Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Gleaned from these frame- work and policy issues leading to the Glasgow COP in 2021, how does climate justice look under the Paris Agreement? Drawing on the author's lived, legal practice and civil society experience, carrying out a doctrinal analysis of the UNFCCC and its instruments, and re- viewing pivotal and representative literature and policy documents, the article claims that climate justice faces the fundamental challenge of state sovereignty. The author creates the conceptual and policy framework to identify the substantive issues converging on this fun- damental challenge, assessing four of them: state self-centredness in addressing adaptation, state influence on the progress made on loss and damage, state autonomy and discretion in providing finance, and state-based policy-making that undermines inclusive decision-mak- ing. State and non-state actors are addressing these substantive issues already under the UNFCCC and beyond, and litigation has become a cross-cutting remedy. However, the fun- damental challenge of state sovereignty remains. I. Introduction Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) also loosely called the global climate regime when referring to the entire UNFCCC process as against the convention alone have debated justice-related concepts and issues from its beginnings. For instance, the convention, which opened for signature in 1992 but entered into force in 1994, recognizes the principles of 'equity' and 'com- mon but differentiated responsibilities and respective DOI: 10.21552/cclr/2021/3/6 Vanier Scholar, Peter A. Allard School of Law, Co-chair, Liu Institute Network for Africa, School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, and Expert for Climate Law, Policy and Justice, Climate Teaching Connector, UBC. The author has presented previous drafts of the manuscript and received feedback from the Acade- mic Council of the United Nations System Annual Meeting in June 2021, the UBC Climate Justice Webinar Series in March 2021, the UBC Climate Emergency Virtual Dialogue- Climate Justice in June 2020, and the UBC Liu Institute Network for Africa Symposium in October 2019. Thanks to Ruth Angela Situma, Linda Nowlan and Andjelka Mihajlov for reading and commenting on the drafts. Many thanks to the anonymous referees for thoughtful comments and Jakob McKernan for han- capabilities' under Article 3, and parties took account of 'common but differentiated responsibilities' in their policy negotiations at the first Conference of the Par- ties (COP) at Berlin, Germany, in 1995.1 Numerous stakeholders and scholars have also debated these and other justice-related concepts and issues applicable to the global climate regime, including justice, environ- mental justice, distributive justice, global justice, and anticapitalism. For instance, Shue made a seminal con- tribution examining differential emissions2 and oth- er issues under the regime, using justice as his lens.3 dling the manuscript. The research would not be possible with- out the Vanier Scholarship from the Government of Canada and the International Doctoral Fellowship and other grants from the University of British Columbia. For correspondence: <temi- tope@onifade.org>. 1 Report of the Conference of the Parties on Its First Session, held at Berlin from 28 March to 7 April 1995 <copl 07 (unfccc.int)>. 2 Henry Shue, 'Subsistence Emissions and Luxury Emissions' (1993) 15 Law and Policy 39; Henry Shue, Climate Justice: Vulnerability and Protection (Oxford University Press 2014). 3 Henry Shue, 'The Unavoidability of Justice' in Andrew Hurrell and Benedict Kingsbury (eds), The International Politics of the Environment (Oxford University Press 1992). S233

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