Legal Systems and Loss & Damage at the Ocean-Climate Nexus: a Tribute to Meinhard Doelle

Abstract

Abstract In 2021, the Research Handbook on Climate Change Law and Loss & Damage was published. Co-edited by myself and my late colleague Meinhard Doelle, the Handbook seeks to clarify the need for legal systems, both within and beyond the climate regime, to evolve so as to fairly and equitably address climate loss and damage claims. The Handbook considers the challenges of legal remedy for climate loss & damage from the perspectives of public international law and domestic, transnational, and private international law. While loss & damage at the ocean-climate nexus is implicit in many chapters, this contribution will reflect explicitly on how the lessons from the Handbook could apply at the ocean-climate nexus, with reference to the London Convention and Stockholm Declaration at fifty, developments at COP 28, and the Advisory Opinion on Climate Change before the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea.