12 Jul 2018 Blogpost Environmental rights and governance

New law and climate change toolkit to guide the implementation of the Paris Agreement

The UN Climate Change secretariat, UN Environment, and the Commonwealth Secretariat are developing a new online Law and Climate Change Toolkit to help countries create the necessary legal frameworks for effective implementation of the Paris Agreement and their Nationally Determined Contributions.

The toolkit is designed in collaboration with and for use by national governments, international organizations, and experts engaged in assisting countries to implement national climate change laws, as well as academia and research institutions that are undertaking analysis of the growing body of climate change-related legislation throughout the world.

Building on existing climate legislation databases, the toolkit will feature a search function that provides access to climate change-related laws, both within overarching climate change laws and sectoral legislation, from around the world. Users will be able to search for relevant laws and provisions by way of a free text search and/or the use of a guided taxonomy that includes legal areas and cross-cutting categories. To enhance the relevance of information provided by the toolkit, users will also be able to filter results by country, promulgation year of the legislation, and type of legislation.

Another key feature of the toolkit is the legal assessment tool, which allows users to analyze a country’s legislation, identify priority areas for climate law review, and potential areas of legislative or regulatory reform. To complement the first two features, a database of lessons learned will be added over time, where users can obtain information on how provisions from national laws are being applied and on what works in climate law in different countries around the world. The toolkit will also feature an interactive user guide.

The Law and Climate Change Toolkit will be rolled out in phases. The first phase focuses on a limited subset of general climate laws and some examples from the energy sector, already loaded into its current beta version. It is envisaged that in 2018-2019, the toolkit will broaden in scope to include all sectors that are relevant to addressing climate change.

Learn more about the toolkit.

For more information, please contact: Maria.Manguiat[at]un.org.