The Paris Agreement on climate change has been widely hailed as a diplomatic triumph, but it commits its signatories only to a process, not to anything of substance. It represents a gamble: that if enough governments say they will act, they will believe each other and have the confidence to move forward – and that businesses and investors will believe them too. Six years later, the gamble appears to be succeeding, but despite this, progress is nowhere near fast enough. Global emissions of greenhouse gases are still going up.

In the concluding chapter, I look back at the question I began with and the answer I found in the practice of writing. I re-visit accounts of science and politics and describe the three sides to this relationship that I observed in the IPCC. I identify sites within the UNFCCC that have been designed to bring climate science and climate politics closer together, such as in the Global Stocktake of the Paris Agreement. While this brings accountability against the approved knowledge base, it is likely to further increase the political pressure on the IPCC as an organisation and as a practice for writing climate change. From the IPCC’s location in global climate politics, I move inward to the actors, activities and forms of authority that constitute and shape this practice of writing. The book reveals the importance of looking beyond scientific and political forms of authority and describes why the TSUs matter as actors that have the potential to uphold or challenge the scientific order of relations. I explore the implications of science as a site of politics, the global asymmetries in the knowledge economy, and their effects on participation for the design of new intergovernmental assessment bodies, which from the outset must design for meaningful participation by all in these critical sites of agreement-making.

Between 2016 and 2020, Australia began to feel the effects of international pressure on climate change and struggled to articulate a convincing public case that its failure to take decisive action was consistent with national interests and values. This chapter asks how and why the government found itself in this seemingly unsustainable position, and the role that Australia’s approach to climate change played in its foreign policy more generally. It first discusses Australia’s approach to the international climate regime and the commitments made under the Paris agreement, before examining the impact of the leadership change from Turnbull to Morrison and election outcomes within Australia. The third section examines the domestic pressure for political action on climate change, especially during the 2019–20 bushfires and their aftermath, before shifting to a focus on the international pressure that Australia faced. The chapter concludes with a reflection on the state of climate politics and policy in Australia, and the possibility of moving beyond the ‘toxic politics’ of climate change that have long plagued Australia’s engagement with this issue.

We assess the development of informality in international climate policy on two levels: Whether informal organizations meaningfully contribute to climate change mitigation, and what role informality plays under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Proliferation of informal intergovernmental organizations (IIGOs) has enabled the move from a rigid list of countries with and without commitments, to the Paris Agreement, under which each country contributes to mitigation. Within the UNFCCC process, we find a “formality-informality cycle,” in which actors sometimes render rules and procedures more flexible and hence more efficient, only to suddenly reverse this trend at other times. Such a high-profile reversal occurred in Copenhagen in 2009. Subsequently, through the use of highly transparent negotiation procedures, trust in informality increased again, allowing negotiators to successfully override Nicaragua’s opposition in Paris in 2015. Similar formality-informality cycles can be observed on specific topics within the UNFCCC negotiations, such as international market mechanisms.

Energy intersects with the environment at every stage of its life cycle. The energy supply chain can have adverse effects on nature and public health, including GHG emissions, air, land and water pollution as well the generation of harmful waste, among others. In order to reduce our dependence on high-carbon energy, more needs to be done to increase renewable energy generation and improve energy efficiency. As energy is involved in trade and investment projects, it is covered by the trade and investment branches of international economic law and regulated in these fields mainly by the rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT), regional trade agreements (RTAs) and international investment agreements (IIAs). This book aims to contribute to the existing scholarship by providing a comprehensive analysis of the energy–environment nexus under trade law and investment law, showing, where relevant, their similarities, differences or even (potential) conflicts at the energy–environment interface. It examines the legal foundations of the energy–environment nexus and associated issues regarding trade control, subsidies, technical standards, investment protection and technology policies.

Human activities, principally through emissions of greenhouse gases, have unequivocally caused global warming, with global surface temperature reaching 1.1⁰C above 1850–1900 in 2011–2020.’ These words are from the Summary for Policy Makers of the Synthesis Report of the IPCC’s 6th Assessment Report. It is the aim of this book to help you understand exactly how, and why, the collective body of scientists has come to these, and many other, conclusions. Addressing this aim requires that you understand two facets of the nature of our planet. Firstly, you need to understand how our planet ’behaves’ under what we might choose to call ’normal conditions’. Secondly, you need to understand how human activity has moved us away from that normal. The following chapters will take you through both of these in the necessary detail. In this chapter we present a quick overview, as well as introducing you to the IPCC.

Chapter 5 delves into the relationship between humans and the natural environment. It focuses on three key aspects: (1) the context, which provides an idea of the importance of humans in relation to the natural environment on which they depend; (2) the reasons why human intervention in the natural environment is considered to have led to the so-called Anthropocene era; and (3) the ways in which intensive human intervention has fundamentally altered the balances in the biosphere and the effects of that. Scientific evidence of several possible planetary emergency scenarios is shown to inform managers, entrepreneurs, investors, consumers and public policy decision-making.

The first and introductory chapter explains the necessity of this book, in other words, why it should be read. Several questions arise to illustrate this: If climate emergency is the grand challenge, why is so difficult to address it? Is it technically feasible? Economically? Trying to address it, we frame the current climate emergency as an extreme case of the well-known phenomenon of ‘the tragedy of the commons’. As a potential solution, we introduce a new disruptive business model and environmental strategy called ‘regenerative’, characterised by two main elements: (1) cutting-edge climate science solutions (capturing and utilising atmospheric carbon dioxide capable of producing net zero and even net negative emissions or positive environmental externalities); and (2) firm purpose redefinition under a new ecological, ethical and moral paradigm. Finally, a brief description of the book’s contents is presented.

The article shows the evolution of the environmentalization of international human rights law, and analyzes the functions of HRTB as international bodies for compliance with the obligations of States under the main human rights international treaties. The author pays special attention to the contribution of HRTB to ensuring compliance with the climate-related human rights obligations of states as a new trend of greening of HRTB. In this area, HRTB are now at the forefront of international compliance procedures. In this regard, we will analyze the relevant documents of HRTB (concluding observations, general comments, and statements) and cases of Human Rights Committee and Committee on the Rights of the Child. The author conducts a comparative legal analysis of HRTB with other means of dispute resolution and compliance procedures, primarily non-compliance procedures under MEAs. Based on this, the author shows the advantages and disadvantages of HRTB in the field of resolving environmental disputes and ensuring compliance with environmental legal obligations of States.

Facilitative, non-punitive compliance machinery has a stronger theoretical basis now than ever before. Previously competing rationalist and managerial approaches to compliance come together in an interdependent world where we are confronting challenges that affect all States, including climate change, pandemic prevention and high seas conservation. In these contexts it is inherently rational for all States to play their part in addressing shared challenges by implementing their commitments; facilitative implementation and compliance arrangements on the model seen in the Paris Agreement will assist and support them in their efforts. The author investigates the benefits of the Paris Agreement model for compliance provisions in new international treaties including Agreement under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ), the international agreement on pandemic preparedness and response, and the plastics pollution treaty.

Many multilateral environmental treaties have established committees that monitor compliance and/or facilitate implementation. These committees can be triggered in a number of ways, e.g., when a State party seizes the committee concerning another State party’s compliance or implementation. This type of trigger resembles the most traditional judicial proceedings, as it opposes two States, and has the potential to lead to decisions of non-compliance. It is perceived to be more confrontational than facilitative. State-to-State triggers therefore sit in between judicial and non-judicial procedures, and between facilitation on the one hand and enforcement on the other. State-to-State triggers have only been used a handful of times. This chapter explores why such triggers have been sparsely used. It first explains how State-to-State triggers were established and describes the instacnes in which they have been used. It then identifies and discusses two main challenges faced by State-to-State triggers: challenges related to the perception and behaviour of States vis-à-vis such triggers, and challenges related to institutional design and procedural mechanisms of State-to-State procedures.