Christopher Campbell-Duruflé: Legal Accountability Can Promote Environmental Compliance

With the Paris Agreement, 195 parties pledged to curtail their greenhouse gas emissions and fund adaptive solutions to climate change. As in any agreement, however, the dual question of accountability and compliance arises. In a chapter published on 24 April 2018 in Climate Law, 2016 Foundation scholar Christopher Campbell-Duruflé argued that parties’ compliance with the Paris Agreement could be promoted through a legal accountability approach. He recommended "practices of legal justification, assessment, and consequences" within the Agreement’s Implementation and Compliance Committee. Campbell-Duruflé concluded that although this approach would still be subject to political acceptance, it has the potential to “foster parties’ sense of trust, reciprocity, and legal obligation toward one another.”

Christopher Campbell-Duruflé is a 2016 scholar and a doctoral candidate in international law at the University of Toronto. Read his article here.