On the 13th of April 2018 the Regional African Law and Human Security Programme (RALHUS), at UWC, in conjunction with the South African Research Chair in International Law, at UJ, will host the Fourth Annual Rule of Law and Sustainable Development Seminar, in Stellenbosch, South Africa.
The topic of the seminar is The International Climate Change Regime, Modern Sustainable Energy and the Sustainable Development Goals.
Goal 13 of Agenda 2030 mandates states to “take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts’”. SDG 13 affirms that the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is the primary international, intergovernmental forum for negotiating the global response to climate change. Reciprocal acknowledgement of the SDGs by the UNFCCC regime can be found in Decision 1/CP.21 adopted at the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP) where the COP welcomed the adoption of the SDGs, in particular Goal 13. The Paris Agreement provides for several mechanisms to address climate change in order to further sustainable development and SDG 13. As such the preamble of the Paris Agreement explicitly acknowledges “the need to promote universal access to sustainable energy in developing countries, in particular in Africa, through the enhanced development of renewable energy”. Furthermore, the UNFCCC refers to energy efficiency in its preamble as a measure to counteract increasing energy consumption. These references lend considerable support to SDG 7 on sustainable energy, in particular targets 7.1 and 7.2 and the potential that the climate change regime has to induce sustainable energy projects.
Please contact Werner Scholtz (wscholtz@uwc.ac.za) for further information.
Feature image: Josh Gellers
