Pick Our Brains

The Pick our Brains sessions of the Maastricht Centre for Human Rights are for both PhD students and more senior members of our Centre and members of other research centres and universities. These sessions are intended as a mode of intellectual stimulation and exchange, or to potentially promote collaborations within/outside the Centre. The sessions are also designed as an opportunity to get feedback on ongoing/upcoming research, showcase recent research and events at which you presented, as well as to enable an exchange of scholarly ideas. Each session contains a short presentation and a lively debate. 

These sessions will take place physically and online. The Zoom link for the online sessions will be distributed later.  

On 14 May our speaker is Liam Siry (Maastricht University). The title of the presentation is The Paris Agreement and Climate Litigation: shifting from vague to concrete commitments.

This is the abstract:
Climate change remains one of the most pressing global challenges, with transboundary impacts ranging from rising temperatures and biodiversity loss to socio-economic disruption. Despite the international community’s commitments under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Paris Agreement, a significant gap persists between stated global climate ambitions and the actual mitigation measures implemented at the national level. In response, domestic climate litigation has emerged as a potent tool for holding governments accountable, particularly in developed countries where courts have increasingly stepped into a gap-filling role.

This presentation explores how national courts interpret and apply the often ambiguous provisions of the Paris Agreement, focusing on litigation brought against governments for inadequate mitigation efforts. It begins with a critical assessment of the evolution of differentiation in the international climate regime—from the binary developed/developing country divide of the Kyoto Protocol to the more nuanced, self-differentiated approach of the Paris Agreement. The methodology outlines the selection of jurisdictions—focusing on developed countries within the Global North. By analysing apex court decisions in selected jurisdictions, this study examines whether and how domestic courts concretize international climate obligations, particularly in the context of mitigation duties. It also reflects on the limitations of available data and the considerations tied to the global north/south divide. The chapter then turns to the actual practice of domestic courts with regards to several key aspects of the Agreement, such as its temperature goal, and the system of NDCs.

This presentation will discuss the results of the research so far, such as the role of the Conference of the Parties to the Paris Agreement in concretizing obligations, as well as what is to be expected of domestic courts in this setting. It will then highlight the next stages of the research.