News
Online lecture of Prof. Mary Wood (Uni Oregon): Atmospheric Trust Litigation Against Governments to Force Action on Carbon Reduction
11 May 2021
Professor Wood will describe lawsuits filed against governments in the U.S. and across the world to force carbon emissions reduction. She will compare judicial approaches between courts in various countries. She will emphasize the role of science in these lawsuits and define a productive judicial role in verifying appropriate climate targets for nations irrespective of political commitments.
Mary Christina Wood is a Philip H. Knight Professor of Law at the University of Oregon and the Faculty Director of the law school's nationally acclaimed Environmental and Natural Resources Law Center. She is an award-winning professor and the co-author of leading textbooks on public trust law and natural resources law. Her book, Nature's Trust: Environmental Law for a New Ecological Age (Cambridge University Press), sets forth a new paradigm of global ecological responsibility. She originated the legal approach called Atmospheric Trust Litigation, now being used in cases brought on behalf of youth throughout the world, seeking to hold governments accountable to reduce carbon pollution within their jurisdictions. She has developed a corresponding approach called Atmospheric Recovery Litigation, which would hold fossil fuel companies responsible for funding an Atmospheric Recovery Plan to draw down excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere using natural climate solutions. Professor Wood is a frequent speaker on climate issues and has received national and international attention for her sovereign trust approach to global climate policy.
The lecture will take place on 13 May at 5 PM (CEST). To attend, please register at class@ilaw.cas.cz.
UPDATED: The recording of the lecture is available here.
New edition of our newsletter released
31 March 2021
The spring edition of our newsletter is available here. We are bringing news in the area of climate change law and policy in the Czech Republic; in the English version of the newsletter you can read for instance on the air quality in Czechia; on the development in low-emissioon vehicles share in both passenger cars and commercial sphere; or on the limitation of public participation of NGOs in administrative proceedings.
Josef Vavrousek Award 2020 for our team member Eva Balounova
28 January 2021
Congratulations to Eva Balounova who received the first prize in the category of doctoral theses with her work on Legal regulation of climate protection following the adoption of the Paris Agreement. Eva's thesis was successfully defended at the Environmental Law Department of the Faculty of Law, Charles University in Prague. Josef Vavrousek Award is a Czech universities competition of qualification theses with topics related to the environmental protection, sustainability or human-nature relations. It bears the name of the Czech environmentalist, the first Czech Minister of the Environment after the so-called Velvet Revolution of 1989.
In our winter newsletter: Czech Coal Commission decided on coal phase-out, Bečva river poisoned, and more
18 December 2020
Here, you can read our winter newsletter. We offer all important information on the recent decision of the Coal Commission that voted for 2038 to finish the Czech coal phase-out; how to assess this decision from the perspective of the Paris climate targets, and whether the situation is comparable to Germany that selected the same year for their coal phase-out. Moreover, we summarize what we’ve known on the catastrophic September ecological disaster on the Bečva river. We also add new information about the plans on the new nuclear unit at the Dukovany power plant, and several other interesting topics. Do you wish to receive our future newsletters in your mailbox? Just subscribe here.
CLASS to join a successful SOLSTICE project!
9 October 2020
JPI Climate is a European initiative to coordinate climate research and fund new transnational research initiatives to provide knowledge for climate action. The Czech Republic is one of the countries involved in its Joint Programming Initiative "Connecting Climate Knowledge for Europe". The Joint Transnational Call on "Enabling Societal Transformation in the Face of Climate Change" – SOLSTICE brought seven winning projects of international research consortia. One of them is the JUSTDECARB project - „Socially Just and Politically Robust Decarbonisation: A Knowledge Base and Toolkit for Policymakers“. Centre for Climate Law and Sustainability Studies is a member of its consortium led by the CICERO Center for International Climate Research (Oslo). The 3-year project brings together social science and humanities researchers from four disciplines (philosophy, political science, economics, and law) across four countries (Austria, Czech Republic, Norway, and UK). The law part of the project that will be addressed by CLASS will primarily focus on human rights and law principles as criteria for assessing climate policies.
The autumn edition of our newsletter
7 October 2020
The latest edition of the CLASS newsletter is available! We are bringing news in the area of climate change law and policy in the Czech Republic, namely on the preparation of the first Czech climate lawsuit, on the latest court's decision in the Prague Airport runway case, on drafted new legislation in the building sector and the waste a plastics sector, or on cycling in the Czech cities.If you wish to receive our future newsletters in your mailbox, you can subscribe here.
We are inviting you to our blog
28 September 2020
With its format, our “comments” section is close to a blog. We pick up topical issues on climate policy and law in Czechia and comment on them. In our last posts, we brought some new details of the prepared first Czech climate lawsuit, criticized the environmental aspects of the draft Czech new Building Act, or assessed the Czech climate policies. Enjoy the reading!
The Centre for Climate Law and Sustainability Studies presented at the Czech Academic Climate Forum
13 July 2020
The Czech Academic Climate Forum was established in 2013 by a common manifesto of almost thirty experts (in Czech only). It works as an informal platform of researchers and experts drawing attention to the effects of climate change in the Czech Republic, and offers its knowledge, findings and contexts to policy makers, business, media and the education system. It looks for synergies across disciplines and calls for scientific knowledge to be considered, interpreted and communicated in order to raise public awareness. The June meeting of the Forum was held at the UN Information Centre Prague. There, the mission, goals and plans of the Center for Climate Law and Sustainability Studies were presented by Hana Müllerová; the relationship between climate science and law was then the main topic of the discussion.
Second edition of our newsletter released
8 July 2020
The summer edition of our newsletter is available here, bringing news in the area of climate change law and policy in the Czech Republic; in the English version of the newsletter you can read for instance on phasing out coal in Czechia, on planning a new nuclear reactor (as the Czech government insists on taking nuclear energy as a low-emission source of energy), on proposing a cut-back in state support for solar installations or on reservations expressed by Czech officials about the EU Recovery Fund. If you wish to receive our future newsletters in your mailbox, you can subscribe here.
You can join us at Twitter and Facebook!
15 June 2020
You can now follow our Centre at Twitter (in English) and Facebook (mostly in Czech). On both social media you will find the climate law news and current information on the activities of our Centre.
The first newsletter just released!
5 May 2020
We have just released the first newsletter of our Centre. We would like to bring news in the area of climate change law and sustainability; our English version of the newsletter is specifically focused on news from the Czech Republic that otherwise might miss you. You can read the newsletter here.
CLASS team working from home
31 March 2020
The Institute of State and Law of the Czech Academy of Sciences has temporarily closed its physical offices in Prague in response to COVID-19. The team at the Centre for Climate Law and Sustainability Studies are all working remotely, from home. We are learning new ways of continuing our research and looking for innovative and creative opportunities to communicate our findings, including via digital gatherings and virtual meeting technologies. The COVID-19 topic has taken over the public space and seems to have temporarily eclipsed the climate change debate. However, we are progressing with our work, hoping that our communities will overcome the crisis together and that afterwards we will be able again to present our findings and publications at personal meetings and conferences that are currently impossible.
The Centre for Climate Law and Sustainability Studies (CLASS) launched research
20 January 2020
The new research unit, the first in the Czech Republic with a specialisation in climate law, was set up at the Institute of State and Law of the Czech Academy of Sciences. A team of law researchers and a climatologist will study the contemporary challenges and problems that climate change poses to law at all levels. The members of the Centre will steer the new discipline into Czech law scholarship and cultivate and present it systematically through conferences, workshops, expert lectures and publications, as well as by presenting their findings on the Centre’s website. They will develop interdisciplinary collaboration and establish contacts and cooperation with other climate law research teams in Europe. The creation of the new research unit has been realised thanks to the kind support of the Czech Academy of Sciences through a ‘Lumina quaeruntur’ academic award that was granted to our researcher Hana Müllerová to run her climate law project over the next five years. Her new team will examine the environmental law aspects of the consequences of climate change, as well as related issues such as legal links between climate change and protection of human rights, the regulation of energy, transport, emission trading systems and international trade and investment. The focus of the Centre will cover International, European and Czech law. At the level of national law, the team plans to stimulate better implementation of our climate commitments and to provide expert recommendations and opinions to Czech legislative and other public bodies.
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