Climate Change and The New World Order

The urgent need for an
International Court for the Environment

An International Court for the Environment is today, more than ever before, a most urgent requirement.

As the United Nations Climate Change Committee meets in Poznan, Poland on the 1st  December 2008, it is concerning that Poland, Germany, and Italy are already talking about failing to meet EU carbon emission reduction targets of 20% by 2020 on the basis of the fear of rising energy prices.

Last year global carbon emissions increased by three percent.

According to Stephen Hockman QC, “Economic crisis or not, controls over carbon emissions need to be imminent and non-negotiable.” “International legal instruments and their enforcement are crucial,” he says.

"The Kyoto Protocol is a failed experiment", says Oliver Tickell, author of Kyoto 2. “Just as emissions should have been contracting, they were actually surging faster than anyone imagined possible. We now need a new climate agreement that will be efficient, equitable and above all effective. It must incorporate a global emissions cap, and yield substantial funding to safeguard biospheric carbon, finance climate adaptation in poor countries, and bring about a clean energy revolution worldwide. The Kyoto Protocol is inadequate to the task, and that is why we need a new treaty that really can deliver the goods."

The UK is the world leader in its forward thinking and bold initiatives on climate change issues. The UK is the first country to seek to introduce the measures in the Climate Change Bill. The recent appointment of Ed Miliband as Minister for Energy and Climate Change is ground-breaking in its acknowledgement of the direct link between Energy usage and Climate Change. It is a step that the United States is yet to take. The binding undertaking to cut UK carbon emissions by 80% by 2050 is brave and achievable.

Therefore, we propose to discuss whether an International Court for the Environment might be set up, based in the UK, its natural home. It will be a global arbiter, privately backed initially, with an opt in by individual countries, with the long term goal that it will be administered by the United Nations, and with the potential remit of adjudicating on issues such as water, oil, petrocarbons, minerals extraction, carbon emissions – all areas where litigation is growing.

As the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon says “we must kick the carbon habit. Urgent global action is required.”

The need for institutional change, and especially for an International Court for the Environment, is therefore more pressing now than any other time in our history.

As we journey from Poznan towards Copenhagen in 2009, we must move towards a global ‘structure of control’.

 

 

Gordon Brown, Prime Minister says:

"[Stephen Hockman QC's] proposal for the world environment court is an interesting one. The first stage is persuading all countries to accept binding targets. That will be our priority in the post-2012 negotiations, and we will ally to that our proposal that funding be made available to developing countries to persuade them that it is in their interests to sign up to those agreements. His proposal is one that will be taken into account in terms of discussions about how we make those agreements binding"

Prime Minister's Questions.
Hansard 19 Mar 2008 Col 939