Description
Joining law and science in a conference with integrated masterclass is a unique opportunity offacilitating inter-generational, multi-disciplinary discourse to identify a global climate consensus
amongst the next generation in the legal professions and beyond. Climate change is an
unprecedented challenge to humankind. It represents one of the great risks that the next generation
faces when we hand the planet over.
The Dundee Climate Conference with integrated masterclass brings together climate change experts from academia and
practice in law with experts from geoscience research and PhD students, LLM and MSc Sustainability students of the School
of Social Sciences. This creates an opportunity to better understand the interlinkage of legal research and scientific research
as a basis for climate action and climate education. Climate action encompasses timely regulatory action to prevent a further
increase of the global mean temperature but also litigation to improve mitigation of and adaptation to changing climate
conditions. Law and science speak different languages when discussing crucial concepts which are highly relevant for both,
decision making to further address climate change in policy and law and also tracing accountability for severe weather
events and slow onset events.
The conference examines the current legal framework on climate action after the adoption of the Paris Agreement. This
includes discussing the requirements of concrete legal concepts such as causation and attribution as a requirement of both,
preventive climate action and climate litigation against States and so called carbon majors, in the context of the available
scientific evidence. It does this while addressing an overarching topic: The identification of elements of a global climate
consensus after Paris. Is it possible to identify a global common denominator that allows climate action to be sufficiently
timely, as demanded by scientific experts? If not, how could this be achieved and how can we educate the next generation so
that they are even better at it? This will entail a discussion of the rules on implementation of the Paris Agreement which were
adopted in Katowice, Poland and ‘COP 24’, the role of access to judicial protection in the climate change context and also
scientific research which allows to assign historic responsibility for extreme weather events and suggests that the remaining
time span for effective action is short.
| Period | 27 Sept 2019 → 28 Sept 2019 |
|---|---|
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Dundee, United KingdomShow on map |