Responsibility for climate change under the ILC Articles on the State Responsibility of States for International Wrongful Acts (ARSIWA)

Abstract

The Articles on the Responsibility of States for International Wrongful Acts (ARSIWA) create a framework for the attribution of state responsibility for internationally wrongful acts. There is ongoing legal and academic discussion of whether the ARSIWA can be applied to environmental issues. The Climate Crisis is one of the most pressing contemporary issues. The purpose of this paper is to determine whether the ARSIWA can be applied to the issue of climate change. The results of the research are that responsibility for the causes and impacts of climate change can be attributed to individual states under the ARSIWA, resulting in state responsibility for climate change. But that the ARSIWA are not likely to be applied to this area of law until implementation is complete. Overall, this paper identifies significant opportunity for the application of the ARSIWA principles to the issue of climate change.