The Sixth Commitee of the UN General Assembly is currently meeting at the UN Headquarters in New York. One of the panel discussions during the informal meetings of chief legal advisors of Ministries of Foreign Affairs on October 25th 2016 focused on the “Legal dimensions of the concept of climate justice”. For the first time, this topic was taken up at the meeting, with about 150 legal advisors present.

Panellists were Prof. Michael Gerrard (Columbia University, Sabin Center for Climate Change Law), Prof. Cymie Payne (Rugter University), Prof. Katrina Kuh (Hofstra Law School) and myself. In my talk, I analysed how the concept of climate justice is reflected in the Paris Agreement (climate-justice-in-the-paris-agreement).

The discussions – informed by the imminent entry into force of the Paris Agreement on 4 November 2016 – aimed at clarifying the content of the concept and at highlightening its various dimensions, such as human rights as a core value of the global order and distributive justice in terms of allocation of burdens and efforts of climate actions.