Climate Change
The climate change policy is a young field of the environmental policy and law both in the EU and the Member States. The EU has already identified that the way forward is an integrated energy and climate change policy. Its implementation, the integration of provisions driven by climate protection in the legislation needs a long term and prudential legislative work. Both the EU and the Member States are responsible for the fulfillment of this legislative challenge and they have it still in (crucial) part before them. Consequently, climate change needs to be main-streamed into other policy and legislative areas. Justice and Environment intends to contribute to this legislative work and accordingly climate change has been a priority issue in 2008 and 2009.
In 2008 J&E set the cornerstones of its work and adopted its policy in the Climate Change Working Group. We have followed a holistic approach based on the firm belief that climate change considerations should be integrated into all environmental and spatial planning concerns, including transport, housing, economic growth, water supply and waste management, and should not be considered separately. In J&E’s view climate change can not be managed solely as an environmental problem, accordingly the environmental law can not tackle with this problem in itself. There is the necessity for a collective, targeted, coordinated and consistent approach. This holistic approach should be followed by legislation aiming at reduction of emissions and stabilization of climate change (mitigation) as well as adaptation to the changes.
In accordance with the identified holistic approach J&E compiled a comparative legal analysis in 2008 based on the national analyses of four Member States (Estonia, Hungary, Slovenia, Czech Republic). In 2008 J&E focused on horizontal issues primarily and gave an overview by this comparative legal analysis about the existing legal provisions aiming at climate protection and their lack in general environmental laws and environmental procedural laws in the analyzed Member States.
Accordingly the national analyses and the comparative analysis encompass several pieces of law having direct or indirect climate relevance.J&E intends to convince the legislative bodies and the public (by professional NGOs) about the necessity of the presented systematic approach. Based on this one-year comparative research, J&E members summarized in a position paper the most pressing issues and outlined specific recommendations to be presented to governments of concerned countries, the European Commission (EC) and other interested stakeholders.
In 2009 J&E continues to focus on climate change legislation of the Member States particularly their climate change acts or their drafts and concepts. We study the first such European output, the British Climate Change Act and based on it and the national concepts, drafts of the J&E members’ governments we compile a model framework climate change act. Accordingly J&E members will assist the governments of the Member States and professional national NGOs in the preparatory work of the national ‘Climate Change Bills’. Ultimately, the goal of activities in this topic is to contribute to better climate change mitigation and adaptation in the EU.
