Events

The Centre for Policy Research’s Climate Initiative is delighted to invite you to a seminar titled “Negotiating the 2015 Climate Agreement: Issues relating to Legal Form and Nature”

The topic will be introduced by Dr Lavanya Rajamani, Research Professor, CPR,  and followed by a panel discussion with Ambassador Chandrashekar Dasgupta, IFS (Retired) and Former Indian Negotiator, and Luther M Rangreji, Associate Professor, Faculty of Legal Studies, South Asia University, and Former Indian Negotiator.

The on-going UN negotiations for a 2015 climate agreement have yet to resolve two fundamental legal issues on which the effectiveness of this agreement will hinge. First, they have yet to resolve the precise legal form this agreement will take. Parties agreed in Durban, 2011 to launch work towards a ‘protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force under the Convention applicable to all Parties’ to be adopted in Paris in December, 2015. This formulation, reflective of divergences among Parties, leaves scope for a range of possibilities on legal form, some of which are binding and others are not. Second, Parties have yet to determine, the legal nature of the ‘nationally determined contributions’ Parties are expected to submit in the context of the 2015 agreement.

This seminar will start a conversation on these two critical legal issues in the 2015 climate negotiations. The introduction will draw on a recent paper by Lavanya Rajamani titled, “Negotiating the 2015 Climate Agreement: Issues relating to Legal Form and Nature” published in the Mitigation Action Plans and Scenarios, Issue 28 (2015).

Additional Resources:

• Negotiating the 2015 climate agreement
• Key legal issues in the 2015 climate negotiations