The Legal Obligation of States to Price Carbon Emissions

16 Pages Posted: 13 May 2019

See all articles by Alexander Zahar

Alexander Zahar

Southwest University of Political Science and Law; China-ASEAN Legal Research Center; Macquarie University - Macquarie Law School (Sydney, Australia)

Date Written: April 13, 2019

Abstract

The Paris Agreement obliges states to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions more than they would have otherwise. It thereby obliges them to incur a cost, or pay a price, for those emissions mitigated because of the Agreement. In this sense, states are under an obligation to price at least some of their emissions. The general rule holds even if we exclude the United States (which has announced its withdrawal from the Agreement) and those less wealthy countries whose domestic mitigation effort may not be affected by the Agreement in the short term. Other elements of the Agreement, detailed in this article, also signify a treaty-led elevation of the polluter-pays principle in the climate change regime. I argue that the principle is increasingly being recognized as creating a positive obligation on states to act. The logical endpoint of this progressive development of the law is that every “polluter state” must accept that it will incur a cost for the emission of greenhouse gases in its territory, as a matter of law. An emerging international legal compulsion to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by pricing them is not to be made light of in a field that is almost devoid of substantive law. Recognition of the principle’s legal weight may help to speed up and deepen the global response to climate change.

Keywords: Polluter-pays principle, 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change, 1997 Kyoto Protocol, two-degree Celsius (2°C) limit on global warming, carbon-emission trading, climate change finance

Suggested Citation

Zahar, Alexander, The Legal Obligation of States to Price Carbon Emissions (April 13, 2019). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3371383 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3371383

Alexander Zahar (Contact Author)

Southwest University of Political Science and Law ( email )

Chongqing
China

China-ASEAN Legal Research Center ( email )

Chongqing, Chongqing
China

Macquarie University - Macquarie Law School (Sydney, Australia) ( email )

North Ryde
Sydney, New South Wales 2109
Australia

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