Climate change: responsibilities and obligations of states, enterprises and universities
Organized by TU Delft Faculty of Technology Policy and Management, the TU Delft Climate Institute and Studium Generale Delft.
The next Climate Conference will start on November 30. All members of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change will then gather in Paris to discuss the future of climate change to negotiate the role that each country plays in dealing with this global problems. One of the key issues in these negotiations is the nature and magnitude of the (legal) obligations that states agree on.
In this round table discussion, we will discuss the (moral) responsibilities and (legal) obligations of different parties including national states, enterprises, NGO’s and universities in combatting the global climate change. Earlier this year, a group of legal scholars and experts adopted the ‘Oslo Principles on Global Obligations to Reduce Climate Change.’ Emphasizing the necessity and urgency of fulfilling these obligations, these principles stipulate the legal obligations of states and enterprises “if we are to avoid an unprecedented catastrophe.” With an international and interdisciplinary panel of scholars (including Jaap Spier, one of the initiators of the Oslo Principles) we will reflect on these principles from the perspective of (international) law, philosophy, policy and science and engineering.
Panel members
Jaap Spier, Advocate General of the Dutch Supreme Court and Honorary Professor of Comparative Aspects of Liability Insurance at Faculty of Law, University of Maastricht. He is one of the initiators of the Oslo Principles on Global Climate Change Obligations
Steve Vanderheide, Associate Professor at Departments of Political Science and Environmental Studies in University of Colorado at Boulder. He is one of the leading figures in the current climate ethics debates and the author of the seminal book Atmospheric Justice: A Political Theory of Climate Change (2008, Oxford University Press)
Bram Bregman, Professor Climate Change Science and Policy, Radboud University in Nijmegen and Business Manager Climate Science and Earth Observations at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (in Dutch: KNMI). He was the representative of the Netherlands as focal point in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for nine years.
Kornelis Blok, Professor Energy Systems Analysis Delft University of Technology and Director of Science of Ecofys. He was a lead author for the Third and Fourth Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Moderator: Behnam Taebi, Assistant Professor at Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management and Research Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School.
Programme
15:00 Room will be open
15:15 A brief introduction of the Oslo Principles on Global Climate Obligations
15:30 Reflection by the panel on the principles
16:00 Open discussion with the panel and the public
16:45 Drinks
