Climate Change and Energy Programme - Overview

Contact: MJ Mace (Programme Director)

Current Projects

Past Projects

Climate Change is one of the most serious ecological threats facing the planet. The environmental, social and economic security of many countries is at stake. FIELD has been directly involved in the development of the international climate change regime since its very beginning and continues to be pivotal in the further elaboration and implementation of this regime.

Climate change is already affecting the earth's physical and biological systems: glaciers are melting, a pole-ward migration of plants and animals has been observed and animals are changing their breeding patterns and people are trying to adapt to changing weather conditions. In 2001 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published its Third Assessment Report (TAR) which predicts that climate change will have a global impact but developing countries, and in particular the poor within those countries, will be hardest hit as they are the most vulnerable and have least capacity to adapt. FIELD's climate change programme aims to address these threats by strengthening international and regional legal frameworks and their implementation to ensure that these vulnerable communities are not left to shoulder the economic, health, environmental, social and political burden of climate change effects.

In recent years the main focus of our climate change work has been on legal assistance for the 43 members of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) in negotiating and implementing the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its Kyoto Protocol.

Since 1998 FIELD has also actively participated in promoting the implementation of the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol in the European Union, in particular through the elaboration of the EU emission allowance trading scheme.

Climate Change: The International Legal Framework

Climate Change Research Networks

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