Durban, South Africa, December 8 - The one silver lining to the slow pace of the climate change negotiations is that it gives one plenty of time to attend "side events" to learn what is going on in the broader world of climate policy. In the past couple of days, I attended side events on innovative climate finance, the "partnership...
Following up on Dan Bodansky's excellent post, and our interesting discussion here on MEAs, I wanted to point readers to this useful report from Durban by Reason's science correspondent Ronald Bailey. Bailey has a very useful breakdown on why China's supposed shift on its views on a new climate change treaty is really meaningless. Here is his summary of China's...
Another year, another climate COP. This year's conference of the parties (COP) is in Durban, South Africa. The South Africans have provided a wonderful venue and the meeting has proceeded thus far with few of the histrionics of Copenhagen and Cancun. But a certain weariness has crept into the proceedings, as massive numbers of people gather year after year, with...
Professor Telesetsky, in her generous comments on my article in volume 12(1) of the Melbourne Journal of International Law, raises two pertinent questions. First, why has there been a profusion of cooperative efforts across treaty bodies and second, what are the linkages that are most effective in compelling compliance with treaty regimes? In relation to the first question, Professor Telesetsky disagrees...
[Anastasia Telesetsky is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Idaho] Professor Karen Scott’s recent publication on international environmental governance in the Melbourne Journal of International Law is a must-read piece for those concerned about international environmental law (‘IEL’) being fragmented and fractured across issues, institutions and implementation. In her article, Karen argues convincingly that the current disparate state...
[Karen N Scott is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand] The ‘fragmentation’ of international law is used as a term of description and — more commonly — as a lament. It emphasises the isolation and disconnect between regimes and institutions and is peculiarly apt as a description of international environmental law; a complex regulatory field comprising multiple regimes and...
Many of you have probably already seen the fascinating story of how a North American Bird got the name of a European/Asian country. According to at least one explanation, the bird of the genus Meleagris that many of us will eat today first found its way to England, not via New World explorers and colonists but via Turkish traders...
I haven't been following Australia's new law requiring plain packaging for tobacco products, but I am a bit surprised that Philip Morris has filed a notice of arbitration claiming the law violates Australia's bilateral investment treaty with Hong Kong. Here is PM's argument: Australia is in breach of the BIT because plain packaging: Amounts to unlawful expropriation of PMA’s investments and valuable...
As readers may know, Israel's Knesset is currently considering two laws designed to prevent foreign governments and international organizations from funding progressive Israel human-rights groups: one that drastically limits the amount of funding such groups could receive, and one that imposes a tax of nearly 50% on foreign funds received by human-rights groups that do not receive Israeli funding (i.e.,...
There are many reasons to demand closing Guantanamo Bay and ending the military commissions, such as the government's tendency to invent armed conflicts in order to convict defendants of imaginary war crimes. But even if you don't care about the integrity of international humanitarian law or the coherence of the American approach to that body of law, you should still...
Here is a story that no one (here in the U.S. anyway) is paying attention to: Russia’s accession to the WTO cleared a major hurdle when the WTO Working Party on its accession approved, ad referendum on 10 November 2011, the package spelling out Russia’s terms of entry to the organization. The Working Party will now send its accession recommendation to...
[Rishi Gulati lectures on Public International Law at the University of New South Wales in Australia.] At 9.24am on 12 October 2011, surrounded by chants of “democracy is dead”, a suite of 19 bills (the Clean Energy Bills or the Carbon Tax Bills) were passed in the Lower House of the Australian Parliament. It must be borne in mind that those 19 bills won’t...
