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Centre for Climate Law & Governance
The Dickson Poon School of Law

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About us

Mission

The Centre for Climate Law & Governance is a leading light for interdisciplinary research about legal and governance approaches to climate change and sustainability within and across countries in the Global North and South, taking into account the specificities of particular sectors and local contexts. We investigate and evaluate legal and regulatory design, decision-making, challenges, and innovation; and how, where and with whom these occur in national, transnational and global contexts.

Values

The work programme of the Centre is based on four key values:

  • Acknowledging that humankind has reached a juncture in the climate crisis where there is a clear need to critically evaluate models of climate governance and to share knowledge about how different sectors and societies can proactively enable - as well as respond to – disruptive system-wide change through legal and regulatory innovation.
  • Appreciating that the climate crisis impacts all life on this earth and that impacts are felt inequitably.
  • Advocating a key role for lawyers as educators, litigators, decision-makers, and agents of change.
  • According women of all backgrounds a centre stage as valued contributors, innovators and leaders.

Vision

Embracing interdisciplinarity and using a variety of conceptual, theoretical and methodological approaches, we investigate existing and emerging sites of law and governance under four broad research themes: sustainable finance and business; climate litigation and adjudication; transnational energy transitions; environmental justice.

We conceive ‘law’ and ‘governance’ pluralistically so as to include:

  • The nature and role of law and regulation in a variety of forms including black letter law and soft law; regulation that is transnational, state-imposed, industry-created, or voluntary; and social phenomena such as art and culture that embody regulatory levers.
  • A spectrum of actors – from international organisations and governments to civil society and corporate sectors – that are active in climate governance matrixes in both the Global South and Global North.