A new online resource that will support climate change law-making will be unveiled at the 23rd annual Conference of the Parties (COP23) in Bonn in the week November 6-10, 2017, the Commonwealth Secretariat has announced
A new online resource that will support climate change law-making will be unveiled at the 23rd annual Conference of the Parties (COP23) in Bonn in the week November 6-10, 2017, the Commonwealth Secretariat has announced.
The Law and Climate Change Toolkit aims to help government policy makers to develop laws in order to implement the Paris Agreement.
It contains a sequence of review questions that help policy makers to identify possible gaps in their national laws, then, where possible, suggests legislative options from other countries that could resolve the gap.
Relevant contextual country information is also included in order to enable tailoring of legislative options to the needs of the individual country.
Four Commonwealth countries, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Jamaica and Vanautu, have participated in a consultation process on a pilot version of the toolkit this year.
This pilot version includes an online database of climate change and energy laws, which are classified and tagged at article level, enabling the user to precisely search for specific legal approaches towards mitigating and adapting to climate change.
The Commonwealth Secretariat’s Office of Civil and Criminal Justice Reform, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and UN Environment have all collaborated on the project.
Discussions on the toolkit began following the 2015 Commonwealth leaders’ statement on climate action, which emphasised the importance of `practical and swift action’ to meet the aims of the Paris climate conference.
In October 2015, senior Commonwealth Law Ministers supported the production of a good practice and national laws toolkit and in December, 2016 the Secretariat hosted a workshop for ideas on how to develop the online resource.
Additional modules will be added in the future in other areas, such as transport, water, health, forestry, land use and disaster risk management.
A side event in COP23 on November 8, 2017, hosted by the Commonwealth Secretariat, UNFCCC and UN Environment, will showcase the toolkit, as will an expert roundtable on Climate Law and Governance Day, November 8, 2017.
Steven Malby, Head of the Office of Civil and Criminal Justice Reform at the Commonwealth, said: “It is a much-needed resource for countries to review their national laws and undertake reform in support of their climate policy commitments under the Paris Agreement.”
