COP21 Report

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

COP21 Final Announcement

Legally binding?  Like all treaties, this has to be ratified by all signatories in their home government.  Don't    hold     breath.

[TekindusT 3,809]

No breath is hold. No contract or treaty is legally binding if there is no independent enforcing corps that enforces its application. In this case, the states are both the signatories and enforcers of this treaty in their own borders; and of course, if they can't accomplish the treaty, they won't throw rocks on their own roofs.

I'm very pessimistic of this kind of talks. Real action is never, in no field of life, taken beforehand. There is always a go/no-go trigger to make you go and do the changes: you don't unclutter your e-mail inbox until it's not overflowing and not allowing more e-mail storage. You don't change the bathroom tap until it doesn't clearly leak water. You don't do anything with respect to climate change until your shores and crops are disappearing and your own people are getting displaced. Many will die or will become refugees on the pacific islands states while the "important" European nation states, China and the US are still agreeing on a date to meet.

[LexusInfernus 908]

Quote

The pact doesn't have any mechanism to punish countries that don't or can't contribute toward its emissions-reduction goals.

Even if its legally binding, its still without teeth. 

That said, it can still produce positive effects. Environmental NGO's do now have something on paper which they can use to push governments to do more about the environment and it may provide a boost to companies that want to go green. As a result, investments in a greener economy may increase further and make adopting it easier for governments to promote. 

[krbe 193]

Breaking news; the countries of the world has just reached consensus that they will do something which dictatorships have no interest in doing and which in democracies will take appr. 7 to 9 periods to complete. That's a lot of PMs and presidents.

 

The international system won't work before idealism is removed from it and there is a division between civilised nations and others again.

[feyss 1,981]

Head of governments just had a good time in Paris with taxpayers' money, nothing more.

[Hellken 1,658]

Not much will be done until we have a massive refugee crisis in the future. 

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

At least the fact of climate change is now acknowledged by a majority of the world's governments.  I don't see how anything like this can be "legally binding" without a UN enforcement arm.

Ratification of this treaty will be the next milestone.  It will be at least a couple of decades before this can actually be said to exist.

[TekindusT 3,809]

Well, it was acknowledged back in Kyoto too, and not much has changed since then.

[LexusInfernus 908]

Lots of things are legally binding but don't have some kind of enforcement arm. Legally binding simply means that if you take it to a national court, that court will take the treaty into account as law that applies to the government. Now of course, that means very little in countries where the rule of law is sketchy at best, but in most Western countries, with a strong emphasis on the rule of law, these kind of treaties do get some sort of recognition. Of course, there are still other loopholes countries could use to avoid doing stuff, so people can still get away from it. 

Still, these kinds of treaties do have a positive effect on humanities efforts to combat climate change, if only because they create a legal and normative framework in which governments have to operate. 

[krbe 193]

23 hours ago, LexusInfernus said:

Legally binding simply means that if you take it to a national court, that court will take the treaty into account as law that applies to the government.

You can't take a treaty to court, they are basically contracts between states. And a state can only submit it to judicial review if the other state so agrees to.

As for private individuals, it doesn't create any rights or duties a court can adjudicate on.

[LexusInfernus 908]

If you sign a treaty, whatever it says essentially becomes law if its legally binding. While it might not create any rights or duties for private individuals, it may possibly come up in court through some work around. For example, in the Netherlands a climate action group recently won a court case against the Dutch government on the basis that the government was failing in its duty to protect its citizens from climate change. Had this treaty been signed back then, the court might have possibly taken it into account as well when reaching its conclusion. 

[krbe 193]

15 hours ago, LexusInfernus said:

If you sign a treaty, whatever it says essentially becomes law if its legally binding.

That depends on the country's legal order and the wording of the treaty. What it says is in fact crucial as to whether it is justiciable or not. However, a treaty does not become binding upon signature -- it must still pass domestic Parliaments.

Even then, in most instances treaties only 'become law' if they are self-executing -- that is to say, the treaty is framed in such a way that it is intended to be directly applicable. This treaty is not. It talks a lot about goals, recognition, what parties 'should' and so on, which doesn't really amount to firm commitments as to what needs to be done by signatories. It does not confer any rights or obligations upon a government, it merely affirms their commitment to reach certain goals. Which goals? Goals that are not measurable if just one party is to fail to uphold its end of the deal.

In many other countries, treaties only 'become law' if Parliament decides to make it so, even if it ratifies it. If it is ratified but not incorporated, it is basically a promise by Parliament that it will honour its obligations vis-à-vis other states, but that's also it. And what is there to promise other states in this agreement? Nothing. Again, it speaks of a global goal to keep the temperature below 2 degrees Celcius. If that doesn't happen, then what? Nothing, of course.

I suspect the Dutch court would have seen the present agreement as an intention by the Dutch government to 'do something'; it doesn't actually tell the Dutch government to do anything in specific, and if the government makes good faith efforts to comply with what it believes is its obligations, how can the judiciary decide otherwise in what is essentially a political question? If the world as such fails to reach the goal, how can the Dutch state assume any liability when we don't know the extent of what its measures did or did not do, or, if it failed to take certain measures, how can we know how complicit this failure was in the overall failure?

Further, relying on a treaty being self-executing can be dangerous: The State of Texas violated a Mexican man's right to consular support during his trial after he raped and murdered two girls in Houston; after being condemned to death he sued. The Bush administration tried to persuade the Supreme Court that it had a duty to comply with international law;* the Supreme Court rejected this argument. The International Court of Justice attempted to stay the execution pending hearings (as his right to a fair trial was likely violated); the Supreme Court refused and the Mexican wound up dead a couple of months later. A clear violation of an international treaty, but the protection of international law is of no use to the individual.

* Yes, even the Bush administration took an interest in upholding international law to a certain extent. Wouldn't look so good if China refused US consular officers to visit Americans detained in China by pointing to US precedent and practice, would it?

[Skimbo 304]

Hey, the fact that they managed to create something, everyone of them approved is more than I ever thought which could be done.

 

Yes, it still has to be ratified, but hey. It's a step in a good direction