The Durban Climate Change Conference, held in December 2011, arrived at a set of historic decisions under the climate regime 36 hours after the scheduled end of the conference.The climate regime has been plagued in the last few years, in particular after the debacle at Copenhagen,  by uncertainty and doubt. Doubt over its ability to meet climate goals, and uncertainty over its future, in particular that of the Kyoto Protocol, 1997.

At Durban, parties strengthened the climate regime with decisions to implement the Cancun Agreements, 2010,  extend the beleaguered Kyoto Protocol, 1997, for a second commitment period, and launched a new process to negotiate a post-2020 climate regime. This new process, christened the Ad-Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP), is intended to craft the agreement that will govern, regulate and incentivize the next generation of climate actions.

This talk will seek to parse the text of the decision launching the ADP with a view to distilling the central premises of the negotiations for a post-2020 climate regime, as well as identifying the likely gaps it will have. This talk is based on an article that appears in the current issue of the ICLQ (L Rajamani, 'The Durban Platform for Enhanced Action And the Future of the Climate Regime', (2012) 61(2) Int’l & Comp. L. Qtrl’y 501-518).

About the speaker

Lavanya Rajamani, LL.M. (Yale), B.C.L. & D.Phil. (Oxon), is a Professor at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi, and visiting fellow at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at Oxford University. She was previously a University Lecturer in Environmental Law, and Fellow & Director of Studies in Law at Queens’ College, Cambridge. She is author of Differential Treatment in International Environmental Law  (OUP, 2006), co-editor of Implementation of International Environmental Law (Hague Academy of International Law, 2011), Promoting Compliance in an Evolving Climate Regime (CUP, 2011) Climate Change Liability: Transnational Law and Practice (CUP, 2011) and  of numerous articles in peer-reviewed legal journals.

She is the Rapporteur for the International Law Association’s Committee on Legal Principles Relating to Climate Change. She has worked as a consultant to, among others, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) Secretariat, the Indian Ministry for Environment and Forests, the Danish Ministry of Climate Change and Energy, the UNDP, the World Bank, and the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS). Lavanya writes, teaches and advises on international environmental law, in particular international climate change law and policy.

The seminar will be followed by drinks and nibbles and the opportunity to network

Directions within Central House:

Once you have given your name to security on the ground floor please use the lift or stairs to the first floor. Go through the door on the right hand side and walk to the end of the corridor, where you will find the Jevons meeting room on the left hand side.

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