Stallworthy, Mark --- "Prospects for the UK’s national approach to climate law-making" [2012] ELECD 1209; in Peeters, Marjan; Stallworthy, Mark; de Cendra de Larragán, Javier (eds), "Climate Law in EU Member States" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012) 113

Book Title: Climate Law in EU Member States

Editor(s): Peeters, Marjan; Stallworthy, Mark; de Cendra de Larragán, Javier

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781781002773

Section: Chapter 6

Section Title: Prospects for the UK’s national approach to climate law-making

Author(s): Stallworthy, Mark

Number of pages: 24

Abstract/Description:

The huge tests for policy and law makers from climate change are usefully captured in the idea of climate ‘exceptionalism’, with challenges of a different order to those posed by more bounded forms of pollution threat. Indeed in efforts to tackle climate change, what appears to be a still deteriorating situation suggests a chronic ‘crisis of governance’, as institutional law policy frameworks struggle to develop suitable responses. Furthermore, in light of the international experience of endemic conflict and weak progress, it is through state and regional legal frameworks that for now the more likely catalysts are to be found toward meaningful progress. At the same time, any success achieved would offer, into the longer term, potential for prompting the building of the necessary coalitions for shifting the agendas of global institutions. For EU member states, these challenges are increasingly being mediated at an EU level, pursuant to the quickening pace of development of EU initiatives in climate law. Such are the limitations on EU competences in relevant fields, such as fiscal policy and spatial planning, as well as a still nascent energy role, that for now the locus for seeking solutions, and more particularly for resolving tensions between climate and other policy priorities and legal precepts, remains at member state level.