LAWS666 — Fall 2021 Resource List

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary online defines climate change as “significant and long-lasting change in the Earth’s climate and weather patterns.”

It defines biodiversity as “biological diversity in an environment as indicated by numbers of different species of plants and animals.”

The reason for calling out both climate change and biodiversity upfront is that “climate change” seemingly receives all the media attention, but as a scientific matter the consensus is that we are actually experiencing two related but intertwined crises from the viewpoint of international environmental law and practice. The first challenge is climate change (e.g., increasing amounts of GHGs or Greenhouse Gases are causing general average warming, shifting and sometimes more violent weather patterns, sea level rise, etc.). How far things may go is dependent ultimately on whatever final GHG concentrations may be present in the air in the next 50-100 years (and so there are on-going discussions of changes implicit in 1.5 degree centigrade increase, versus 2 degree centigrade increase, versus 2+ degree centigrade increase, etc.).

The most basic treaty law addressing climate change is the 1992 UN Climate Change Convention or UNCCC, which basic convention the US joined, but which importantly has subsequent substantive protocols (amendments) that the US has not joined. For example, the UNCCC’s 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which received enough ratifications to become a valid treaty amendment, but from the effect of which the US removed itself as a matter of treaty law principles in not joining in the amendment. Then, successively, there was the 2015 Paris Accord which the US joined under the Obama Administration, left under the Trump Administration, and rejoined under the Biden Administration. You be the judge, but we seem to have a problem making and sticking with choices in this area.

The second challenge involves biodiversity, which has an independent importance in scientific terms, but with a basic link to climate change via the change or loss of habitat resulting among other reasons from climate change. For example, locals claim that many animals and plants are migrating north from traditional areas at the approximate rate of 50 miles annually in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains as a result of habitat change.  So climate change and biodiversity concerns are not solely the province of Lowcountry or coastal areas fearing flooding. Meanwhile, habitat “creep” is also not without economic consequences, as with Southern pine beetle infestations making a comeback in South Carolina’s commercial pine forests. The most basic treaty law addressing biodiversity is the 1992 Convention on Biodiversity or CBD, which the US chose not to ratify.

Legal approaches to climate change and biodiversity are really rooted in the early 1990s, particularly as hatched at the Rio Conference of 1992, which effectively set the legal stage for our current scientific and economic choices. There were effectively two alternate paths contemplated at the time, particularly for climate change, namely “mitigation” (meaning measures to avoid climate change by holding down GHG concentrations and so temperatures, which would presumably automatically benefit biodiversity if habitat were preserved), versus “adaptation” (meaning measures to adapt or avoid the effects of climate change, for example building seawalls, raising buildings, etc. in Charleston in an attempt to avoid the effects of rising sea levels attendant upon climate change). As a practical matter, mitigation efforts may continue, but currently we are well on the way generally to adaptation, employing as example the proposed surge protection wall under discussion in Charleston as a result of the Dutch Dialogues and subsequent Army Corps of Engineers study. The scientific consensus now is that we are already experiencing climate change, the question is rather how far it may go looking out to 2035 (Charleston is projected to have significant king tide and similar flooding by then, not to mention concerns about potential higher hurricane surges), 2050 (the date perhaps commonly chosen for significant changes on a national basis), or 2100 (the date perhaps commonly chosen for longer term significant global changes)?

Two international organizations of differing stature, the well-recognized Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or IPCC and the less well-known IPBES or Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, focus on the issues arising at the intersection of climate change and biodiversity loss.  You probably experienced recent press coverage of the initial tranche of the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment published in early August (from Working Group I, covering the physical science basis). Why not access the primary materials directly yourself by reading at least the policymakers’ summary of Part I below? There are two more tranches due to be published during 2022 (focused more on adaptation and mitigation possibilities), as well as the final synthesis document incorporating all three parts. The actual assessment documents run to thousands of pages, which is why most lawyers stick to reading the summaries for policymakers (SPMs) running 25-50 pages.

General Resources

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: Created in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the objective of the IPCC is to provide governments at all levels with scientific information that they can use to develop climate policies.

The IPCC’s Fifth Assessment (2013-2014) was the most recent.

The IPCC’s Sixth Assessment is in process now, but its first part on the physical science was already released in early August 2021 and can accessed here.

Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) is an independent intergovernmental body established by States to strengthen the science-policy interface for biodiversity and ecosystem services for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, long-term human well-being and sustainable development. It was established in Panama City, on 21 April 2012 by 94 Governments.  It is not a United Nations body. However, at the request of the IPBES Plenary and with the authorization of the UNEP Governing Council in 2013, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) provides secretariat services to IPBES. The site offers numerous resources including videos, policy  documents and assessment reports by region, country, and topic. As a practical matter, IPBES with headquarters in Bonn, Germany traditionally has the reputation of being an organization open to all States, but supported chiefly by the Europeans.

There is some increasing cooperation, as witnessed by the IPCC-IBES Workshop Report on biodiversity and climate change (from June 2021). 

United Nations: Treaties, international agreements, and associated documents.  The UN is the organizing body for periodic conferences of the parties (COP) meetings of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), particularly COP 26 or the Glasgow Climate Change Conference to be held Oct 31-Nov 12, 2021 in Glasgow, UK.  To understand and follow this and other UNFCCC COPs, you may access said information via the UNFCCC webpage.

U.S. 4th National Climate Assessment (U.S.), Volume I (2017)

U.S. 4th National Climate Assessment (U.S.), Volume II (2018) – Chapter 19 addresses issues in the Southeastern U.S., including a case study of Charleston’s sea level rise.

Flood Factor: Site enables searching of individual addresses to get an assessment of flood risk. Sponsored by First Street Foundation. First Street Foundation is a non-profit research and technology group defining America’s flood risk. (Get a data set for Charleston by entering Charleston, South Carolina in the search box on the home page.)

NOAA’s Digital Coast: NOAA’s Office for Coastal Management maintains a portal for data and tools for data interpretation and visualization. Includes NOAA’s https://coast.noaa.gov/slr/. Note: Some of these tools are sophisticated and provide tutorials for new users.  Take advantage of the tutorials and the tools will be easier to use.

Climate Central is a non-profit that analyses and reports on climate science. Includes interactive mapping tools, climate science reports, and multi-media resources on climate change.

World Trade Organization’s Environmental Database: contains all environment-related notifications submitted by WTO members as well as environmental measures and policies mentioned in the Trade Policy Reviews of WTO members.

US Bills on climate change:  Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Kamala Harris introduced the Climate Equity Act of 2020 in their respective legislative bodies. The bill in the House is H.R. 8019.  In the Senate it is S. 4513. 

The 117th Congress (2021-2022) has seen a proliferation of climate change bills.  To find them, go to https://www.congress.gov/, set the search bar filter to “Legislation” and enter a keyword search for “climate change” (it’s useful to put the phrase in quotes).

More Recent Developments on the Business (ESG) Side

In May of 2021, Exxon Mobile lost a proxy fight that resulted in three new board members being seated by a tiny activist investment firm that is concerned with ESG issues. The activist investor has promised to push Exxon to fight climate change. 

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has mounted a response to investor concerns regarding climate change and other ESG issues. It has created a Climate and ESG Task Force in the Division of Enforcement. The Task Force will be led by Kelly L. Gibson, the Acting Deputy Director of Enforcement, and will develop initiatives to identify ESG-related misconduct.

Investment banking company Goldman Sachs has issued a series of research reports:

Goldman Sachs has also produced a series of streaming videos discussing the issues in these reports:

You can find these and other streaming videos, along with more research reports, at Goldman Sachs’ Carbonomics page. The videos will be found under the label “The Daily Check-In.”

Goldman Sachs is not alone, on the example of JP Morgan, with a bit of a difference emphasis in questioning the speed at which people seem to assume that an energy transition and decarbonization will take so long:

Eye on the Market:  2021 Annual Energy Paper (JP Morgan Asset and Wealth Management)

Green Finance: What is Green Finance? 

Overview from the International Trade Centre

GGKP: The Green Growth Knowledge Partnership (GGKP) sponsors a number of information portals focused on developing a green economy, including the

Green Finance Platform.

Article on Bloomberg.com

Reed Landberg, Annie Massa and Demetrios Pogkas, Green Finance Is Now $31 Trillion and Growing, June 7, 2019

Reference Librarian Eve Ross has created a LibGuide on Green Finance resources.

Thomas Cooper Databases: Access from Thomas Cooper’s database page. 

GreenFILE: The Thomas Cooper Library does not have a database specifically dedicated to international environmental law, but GreenFILE recognizes “international environmental law” as a subject term. Best research strategy: Select the GreenFILE database from Cooper’s database page. When you get the search template, choose “subject terms” from the “Select a Field” dropdown menu and type “international environmental law” into the accompanying search box. Use other Boolean fields if needed. Use options in left-hand sidebar to filter results.

Agricultural and Environmental Sciences Collection: Best search strategy: Access database and type in the search box (example: international climate). The search engine’s auto-complete feature will populate a number of choices, so you can select one if you find one you like, but you can also run a keyword search without selecting any of the suggested choices. Use options in left-hand sidebar to filter results. Note that the results in this database contain dissertations. Warning: this database is not guaranteed to offer a full-text format for every result discovered.

ASFA: Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Abstracts: includes environmental law on water environments. Note that this database primarily contains abstracts, but the records frequently lead to pdfs of original documents.

Jstor:  archive of scholarly articles from numerous fields of study. Access through the law library’s electronic resource link or from Thomas Cooper’s database page.

Research Guide: Environmental issues frequently overlap with business and economic issues. Thomas Cooper Library offers a research guide to international business & statistics – free web resources, Cooper databases for international business, brief instructions on navigating the databases

Bibliographies

Bibliographies, although they become outdated fairly quickly, are good starting points to use in finding resources. Bibliographies will give you listings of resources on a given topic. If they have become outdated, you can check the catalog for more current editions of the resources listed. You can search for bibliographies in the USC Libraries catalog. In the search bar at the top of the page, type: bibliography climate change.  Restrict the date if you only want current entries.

Many of these resources are online, and most of the physical volumes will be located outside of the law library. We share our new catalog system with the entire borrowing consortium of SC academic libraries, so to filter results by library use the “Library” filter on the left-hand sidebar of your catalog results.

Examples:

Global climate change pathfinder: a guide to information sources Print resource available at Thomas Cooper Library, Call Number QC981.8 .C5 P54 1992

Parris, Adam, author.; United States. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Climate Program Office, issuing body. 2012 (online resource – pdf)

If you don’t find anything you like in the catalog, a Google search will also turn up bibliographies.  Publishers, government agencies, and academic institutions might be the providers.  Suggested search:  bibliography climate change

Examples:

Law-Related Resources

Hein Online:  Scholarly archive of pdf documents; contains databases for international treaties and agreements, as well as UN documents collection.  Also contains documents related to international environmental law.  Best search strategy: conduct a catalog search within Hein for international environmental. 

Access through the law library’s electronic resource link or from Thomas Cooper’s database page.

American Society of International Law (ASIL):  Good collection of general information; some access restricted to members. Topics section offers pages on International Law and Climate Change (currently under development) and Environment, Health, Science, & Technology, and International Economics; contains links to agreements and reports.

Lexis:  Practice Area on International Law (no practice area specifically for international environmental law). 

Congressional Research Service (CRS):  Search for “climate change” in the search box on the homepage.  Results filtered on the left-hand sidebar

House of Representatives:  Get hearings on climate change.  From search bar in upper right of homepage, type: hearing climate change (works on any other keyword, such as sustainability)

ProQuest Congressional:  Research tool accessed through the law library’s electronic resources page.  Access to congressional documents and activity, including bills, committee reports, transcripts of testimony from congressional hearings, and debates and statements from members of Congress. Full-text information can be retrieved using search terms or document numbers. Most productive search strategy to get hearings on the Fourth National Climate Assessment:  The ProQuest Congressional homepage will likely default to “Congressional Publications.”  Accept this default and use the link for the “Advanced” search.  In the “Content Types” on the left-hand sidebar, uncheck everything but Hearings, CRS Reports, and House and Senate Documents/Reports. In the search box in the upper middle of the screen, type “Fourth National Climate Assessment” (typing 4th doesn’t work as well).  Using the dropdown for “in” change the location to Anywhere.  You won’t need to set the date because the Fourth National Climate Assessment was done in 2018, so won’t come up in other time frames.

State or Municipal Climate Change Lawsuits

On September 9, 2020, the City of Charleston filed a lawsuit against 24 fossil fuel corporations over issues related to climate change, concerning which parallel procedural developments you may follow here.  Other municipalities and states have filed their own climate change suits. The Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law maintains a page that tracks domestic climate change cases generally by category.  (The Charleston litigation is basically part of “climate change deception” pattern litigation involving 6-7 on-going state and municipal government cases, which you can follow on the website of Charleston’s out-of-state environmental law counsel;  the Charleston case has been paused temporarily as the parallel Mayor & City Council of Baltimore v. Chevron case filed in 2018 has gone up to the US Supreme Court on procedural issues–  removal.  The defendants seemingly desire to remove such cases to federal court, and presumably would strive to consolidate them in the longer run, but the case against such removal and consolidation is that in the case of novel state-law claims involving climate change all such cases should be left in state courts so that the novel state law claims could eventually be decided by the various state supreme courts–  of course, the defendants presumably will raise a variety of preemption and similar claims too, so these cases may bounce between state and federal courts for some time yet.)   What effect, if any, might you anticipate following the increased attention to climate change produced by significant media and similar attention being paid now to the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment?  The Columbia Law site also offers a portal to non-US climate litigation.  Information on the recent US state/city lawsuits may also be found in the link for “Common Law Claims” in its portal for U.S. Climate Change Litigation.

Michael Burger, Executive Director of the Sabin Center, writes extensively on climate change law.  You can find a list of his selected publications here.  If you can’t link directly to an article from this list, use the citation information to search in the online database service of your choice.  If that doesn’t get you access to the article, contact a member of the reference team in your law library for help.

The US Energy Information Administration has created a profile for South Carolina (and the other states).  This profile provides data on energy use, resources, and industry in the state.

The EPA provides data on greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector, and has created a portal containing information about greenhouse gases and emissions in the U.S.

Surging Seas Risk Finder:  maintained by the non-profit Climate Central, this site offers data and mapping tools that visualize an area’s flood risk, social vulnerability, population, income, and other variables.  Get data and map indicators for Charleston by entering the city’s name in the search box on the landing page.

City-data.com:  The site includes interactive data tools that let you mix and match numerous variables and generate online reports, as well as provides pre-made data sets if you enter a location (City of Charleston, Charleston County).

Research Guide:  Thomas Cooper offers a guide on geospacial and climate data. Geospatial means relating to or denoting data that is associated with a particular location (like Charleston, SC).

Journal Article:  Shana Jones, Thomas Ruppert, Erin L. Deady, Heather Payne, J. Scott Pippin, & Ling-Yee Huang, Jason M. Evans, Roads to Nowhere in Four States: State and Local Governments in the Atlantic Southeast Facing Sea-Level Rise, 44 Colum. J. Envtl. L. 67, 70 (2019)

This Article uses roads as a case study to explore how sea-level rise is altering planning, maintenance, and funding for public infrastructure.  South Carolina is one of the four states that were studied for the article.  Article is available on Westlaw, Lexis, and Hein Online.

Think Tanks: Websites and Resources:  offer research data, blogs, articles, videos, commentary, and analysis.

Brookings Institute: “The Brookings Institution is a nonprofit public policy organization based in Washington, DC. Our mission is to conduct in-depth research that leads to new ideas for solving problems facing society at the local, national and global level.”  Website offers links for global development and international affairs.

Center for Strategic and International Studies: “The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) is a bipartisan, nonprofit policy research organization dedicated to advancing practical ideas to address the world’s greatest challenges.”

American Enterprise Institute: “The American Enterprise Institute is a public policy think tank dedicated to defending human dignity, expanding human potential, and building a freer and safer world.”

The Cato Institute: “The Cato Institute is a public policy research organization — a think tank — dedicated to the principles of individual liberty, limited government, free markets, and peace. Its scholars and analysts conduct independent, nonpartisan research on a wide range of policy issues.” 

Peterson Institute for International Economics: “The Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) is an independent nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization dedicated to strengthening prosperity and human welfare in the global economy through expert analysis and practical policy solutions.”   Offers research, blogs, news

Research help:  If you need research help, you are welcome to contact Rebekah Maxwell by email (rkmaxwel@law.sc.edu) or Teams.  You can also catch her at the library’s reference desk, but days will vary so prior contact will be helpful.

Copyright 2020–21 © David Linnan.