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AbstractThis article argues that the protection of 'community interests' in international law includes intertemporal obligations of States, in cases where it is scientifically foreseeable that preserving the 'status quo' of a protected community interest is increasingly unlikely. The argument is developed for climate change as a 'common concern of humankind' and based on the premise that even if a temperature limitation of 1.5°C would be achieved towards the end of this century, future generations will nevertheless live in a world that has fundamentally changed due to current policy and law choices. The article introduces the new concept of 'intergenerational preparedness' to operationalise and expand the normative scope of the principle of intergenerational equity. While some argumentative structures will be examined where intergenerational preparedness can be given effect through legal interpretation, the expectation that States must adopt preparatory measures to account for their community interest obligations deserves a more explicit recognition. It is a matter of the (environmental) rule of law to protect community interests on a time continuum, and this encompasses measures to prevent the deterioration of protected interests and to prepare communities for foreseeable detrimental changes.

There is a new cloth on the table that provides the setting for global climate action. The 2015 Paris Climate Agreement represents the future legal framework designed to facilitate global efforts to combat climate change in the long-term. This article looks at the fabric of this framework through the lens of the law-making procedure. The lawmaking procedure that brought the Paris Agreement into life and will sustain it, marks a departure from the traditional framework convention-cum-protocol approach and changes it into a 'framework convention-cum-decisions' model. While the Kyoto Protocol was prescriptive in setting individual emission targets for developed countries, the Paris Agreement sets forth an evolutionary multilateral treaty and enables Parties to steer collective and individual efforts towards a worldwide temperature goal through continuous, strategic decision-making. The article demonstrates that the Agreement becomes operational only in the context of the decisions that were adopted by the Conference of Parties with the Agreement and in the context of further decisions that need to be adopted by the 'Conference of Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement'. Many of the skeletal provisions and mechanisms of the Paris Agreement need to be fleshed out and operated through further decisions. New functions and competences conferred on the 'Conference of Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties' change the role that this meeting of the Parties has, making it the driver for the development of the law on combating climate change. This international lawmaking is reinforced through the integration of Parties' decisions within legal orders of Parties, the European Union legal order will be used as an example of one legal order acting as a transmission belt. The article contends that this strategic decision-making affects the legal certainty of international climate action and contravenes the balance between legislative approval of an international agreement and the prerogative of national governments for strategic decisions.

"The World Court Digest" continues the "Fontes Iuris Gentium", a series that presents the decisions of the Permanent Court of International Justice and the International Court of Justice up to 2000. The new volume covers the period from 2001 to 2005. All important pronouncements of the Court in its judgments and advisory opinions are systematically arranged under specific topics taken from substantive and procedural international law. "The World Court Digest" provides reliable access to the decisions of the most significant international judicial organ on question

AbstractClimate litigation has become a strategic tool to push for climate justice, including compensation for losses caused by climate change. Many cases rely on the establishment of a causal relationship between the defendants' emission of greenhouse gases (GHG) and the plaintiffs' losses. All decided cases seeking compensation for a concrete climate related impact have been unsuccessful (thus far). Legal scholars as well as social and natural scientists have looked at individual cases and evidence of these unsuccessful claims, aiming to identify legal and scientific hurdles. Based on previous research where we analysed specific cases, we step back from a case‐specific analysis in this article and identify the social context in which law and science operate and intersect. We assert that without a general understanding of the urgency of climate change and the scientifically proven fact that climate change impacts the present, and that it is possible to attribute individual losses to human‐caused climate change, the fate and future of climate litigation focusing on losses and damages will continue to encounter major obstacles in courts. This is despite the increasingly sophisticated strategies of litigants; the positive outcome of some strategic litigation and improvements in the field of climate science, all of which would be expected to sway for a successful future of the fight against climate change.