Description
The climate crisis is one of the greatest challenges the world has ever faced, yet the global response has so far been insufficient. In line with climate justice scholars like McKinnon, Page and Vanderheiden, this paper holds that climate change raises fundamental questions of justice – the uneven distribution of impacts, the historical responsibilities of a select few actors and the structural barriers towards change embedded within the global climate regime all require closer, critical examination in order to set the world on the path towards true climate justice. While there has been much debate amongst climate justice scholars about the international global governance framework and its role in (not) addressing climate injustices, there has been less discussion within this literature about the international legal system’s response. This paper addresses this gap by arguing that a Global Court for Climate Change could play a key role in the international community’s response to the climate crisis. Such a Court would be crucial for providing a space for the centralisation of climate justice concerns in a way that the current system fails to do.
