Due diligence as a bridge between the law of the sea and domestic climate change litigation

Concentrations of CO2 and other greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere are the highest they have been in millions of years and continue to rise at unprecedented rates. The ocean has taken up approximately a quarter of all atmospheric CO2 emissions, acting as a buffer to climate change, and continues to do so. However, the increased carbon saturation in the ocean is showing signs of dramatic impact with dangerous and deadly consequences for marine ecosystems and human life. At the same time, while governments negotiate at the international level, climate policies implemented at the national level to address GHG emissions and resulting climate change remain wholly inadequate to prevent continued dramatic climate change. The ocean, despite its crucial role in regulating the global climate, is historically relegated within climate change actions to an afterthought or footnote. Against this background, climate change litigation, particularly “systemic” climate litigation that seeks to compel a government to take more ambitious climate change mitigation measures, has become a powerful tool of policy change. These cases routinely invoke states’ international obligations under the climate change regime and are typically decided along due diligence lines of reasoning. As with the international climate negotiations and national climate policy, the ocean is often mentioned within these cases as evidence of the dangerous consequences of GHG emissions but is not a focus of legal arguments or reasoning. This thesis explores the extent to which individuals can invoke due diligence obligations under both the international climate change regime and the law of the sea convention to hold their governments accountable in national courts for failing to adequately reduce GHG emissions, causing ocean-climate related harms.Concentrations of CO2 and other greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere are the highest they have been in millions of years and continue to rise at unprecedented rates. The ocean has taken up approximately a quarter of all atmospheric CO2 emissions, acting as a buffer to climate change, and continues to do so. However, the increased carbon saturation in the ocean is showing signs of dramatic impact with dangerous and deadly consequences for marine ecosystems and human life. At the same time, while governments negotiate at the international level, climate policies implemented at the national level to address GHG emissions and resulting climate change remain wholly inadequate to prevent continued dramatic climate change. The ocean, despite its crucial role in regulating the global climate, is historically relegated within climate change actions to an afterthought or footnote. Against this background, climate change litigation, particularly “systemic” climate litigation that seeks to compel a government to take more ambitious climate change mitigation measures, has become a powerful tool of policy change. These cases routinely invoke states’ international obligations under the climate change regime and are typically decided along due diligence lines of reasoning. As with the international climate negotiations and national climate policy, the ocean is often mentioned within these cases as evidence of the dangerous consequences of GHG emissions but is not a focus of legal arguments or reasoning. This thesis explores the extent to which individuals can invoke due diligence obligations under both the international climate change regime and the law of the sea convention to hold their governments accountable in national courts for failing to adequately reduce GHG emissions, causing ocean-climate related harms