Constructive ambiguity?

• Department of Law

The EUI Environmental Law and Governance Working Group organises its inaugural event of the academic year, in which EUI Law Researcher Sophie Hölscher will be presenting her research on the interpretative ambiguity permeating "Common but Differentiated Responsibilities" in the United Nations climate finance regime.

The regime of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is guided by principles established in the UNFCCC and Paris Agreement. Most of these principles, however, rather than providing clear guidance, are open to being interpreted in many different ways by the actors further developing and implementing the regime’s law. My project is interested in how actors in the policy area of climate finance interpret the principles of the UNFCCC regime, and in what ways they give meaning to the initially open-ended principles when, for example, setting up institutions that distribute funding, developing funding guidelines and priorities, and making decisions (not) to provide funding to a concrete climate mitigation or adaptation project. The presentation focuses on the especially and deliberately ambiguous principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities (CBDR-RC). It juxtaposes different possible interpretations of the principle before exploring the ways in which CBDR-RC interacts with climate finance. Finally, the presentation sheds light on recent developments in the policy area of loss and damage to assess how loss and damage might change arguments made on the basis of CBDR-RC in the area of climate finance.

The EUI Environmental Law and Governance Working Group is a forum where EUI members, external researchers, and practitioners working on environmental law and governance - related topics discuss their work and interact with other scholars. All interested fellows, PhD researchers, professors and visiting academics are invited to participate.