B Mayer
Biographic Data
| ID | 28297 |
|---|---|
| NAME | B Mayer |
| GIVEN NAMES | B |
| FAMILY NAME | Mayer |
| SIGNATURE | MAYER B |
| AFFILIATIONS | Chinese University of Hong Kong |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0669-7457 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 39 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 31 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 38 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Victims in Climate Litigation
Alleged victims have often played a central role in litigation aimed at prompting climate change mitigation. Courts have identified such victims in order to grant plaintiffs standing to sue, justify their invocation of individual rights and consider claims for compensation. This article observes, however, that no individual can really be, at least in a strict legal sense, a victim of a State or an entity’s failure to mitigate climate change. This…
Request for an Advisory Opinion submitted by the Commission of Small Island States on Climate Change and International Law
Not only does this article gives exclusive power to the Indian parliament to implement any treaty to which India is a party, it also provides no exception to this power of the parliament.As such, the SCI should not have taken it upon itself to domesticate India's international law obligations.Doing so was a wide usurpation of legislative power by the SCI, and it makes this otherwise well-intentioned judgment a legally flawed one.Almost a decade a…
Climate Effects in Environmental Impact Assessment
This article analyzes the application of environmental impact assessment as a tool for climate change mitigation from a global comparative perspective. It firstly confirms that, despite persistent resistance in a few jurisdictions, climate effect assessment is now widely applied on a global scale. Yet the article also shows that this practice has faced recurrent practical and conceptual issues, in particular, concerning the determination of the s…
Courts, climate litigation and the evolution of earth system law
Numerous scientific reports have evidenced the transformation of the earth system due to human activities. These changes – captured under the term ‘Anthropocene’ – require a new perspective on global law and policy. The concept of ‘earth system law’ situates law in an earth system context and offers a new perspective to interrogate the role of law in governing planetary challenges such as climate change. The discourse on earth system law has not …
The ‘Highest Possible Ambition’ on Climate Change Mitigation as a Legal Standard
The Parties to the Paris Agreement have committed to communicate successive ‘nationally determined contributions’ (NDCs) to the global response to climate change. Each NDC is expected to reflect the Party's ‘highest possible ambition’ (HPA) on the mitigation of climate change. This article envisages the possibility of taking HPA seriously: that is, of approaching it as an effective legal standard. It shows that, in some circumstances, the HPA sta…
Quando Patrícia Lino Recicla Ana Hatherly
O presente artigo pretende analisar a "Variação XVIII, Ana", publicada na antologia Variações sobre a Saudade (2023), de Patrícia Lino, a partir de, principalmente, as perspectivas de literatura não original e de paródia propostas, respectivamente, por Marjorie Perloff (2013) e Linda Hutcheon (1985). Dessa forma, entende-se que a "Variação XVIII, Ana", ao variar o poema "O Terceiro Corvo", de Ana Hatherly, faz uma paródia não original desta produ…
Progression requirements applicable to state action on climate change mitigation under Nationally Determined Contributions
Prompting Climate Change Mitigation Through Litigation
Courts and scholars have interpreted open-ended legal norms as imposing due diligence obligations on States and other entities to mitigate climate change. These obligations can be applied in two alternative ways: through holistic decisions, where courts determine the level of mitigation action required of defendants; or through atomistic decisions, where courts identify some of the measures that the defendant must take. This article shows that, w…
Climate Change Mitigation in the Aviation Sector
Climate change mitigation calls for the limitation and reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions across all sectors. However, limiting GHG emissions from aviation has proven to be problematic for technical reasons (e.g., lack of low-carbon alternatives) as well as legal reasons (e.g., international aviation does not readily fall within any one state's jurisdiction). Relevant initiatives have followed two streams. At the international level, the…
Attribution science and the fate of climate litigation
Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analyzed in this study
Judicial Interpretation of Tort Law in Milieudefensie v. Shell
In her response to my case comment in this issue of Transnational Environmental Law , Laura Burgers purports to disagree with my analysis on two points. Firstly, she suggests that we disagree on the method that a court should use to interpret the duty of care of corporations on climate change mitigation. Secondly, she disagrees with each of the four inconsistencies that I identify in the decision by the District Court of The Hague (the Netherland…
The judicial assessment of states’ action on climate change mitigation
The Supreme Court of the Netherlands construed the state’s positive human rights obligations as requiring a 25 per cent reduction of its greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 compared with 1990 levels. This article explores how judges can decide the level of state effort required to mitigate climate change. To date, judges have predominantly approached this issue by seeking to identify an elusive benchmark, either by deduction from global objectives o…
The Duty of Care of Fossil-Fuel Producers for Climate Change Mitigation
On 26 May 2021, the District Court of The Hague (The Netherlands) passed an innovative judgment in Milieudefensie v. Royal Dutch Shell. The Court interpreted Shell's duty of care towards the inhabitants of the Netherlands as requiring it to mitigate climate change by reducing the carbon dioxide emissions resulting from its global operations by at least 45% by 2030, compared with 2019. This case comment salutes the identification of a corporate du…
Ejil Roll of Honour; 2021 Ejil Peer Reviewer Prize; Changes in the Masthead; Germany v Italy
Climate Change Mitigation as an Obligation Under Human Rights Treaties
Judges and scholars have interpreted human rights treaties as obligating states to mitigate climate change by limiting their greenhouse gas emissions, an argument instrumental to the development of climate litigation. This Article questions the validity of this interpretation. A state's treaty obligation to protect human rights implies an obligation to cooperate on the mitigation of climate change, the Article argues, only if and inasmuch as clim…
Liability and Compensation for Marine Plastic Pollution
The UN General Assembly and the UN Environment Assembly (UNEA) have expressed concerns about the pollution of the sea by plastics, which adversely impacts ecosystems, some economic activities (e.g., tourism and fishing), and possibly public health (e.g., consumption of contaminated fish). In December 2017, the UNEA decided to establish the Ad Hoc Open-Ended Expert Group on Marine Litter and Microplastics to examine ways to combat marine plastic p…
Science for Loss and Damage. Findings and Propositions
The debate on “Loss and Damage” (L&D) has gained traction over the last few years. Supported by growing scientific evidence of anthropogenic climate change amplifying frequency, intensity and duration of climate-related hazards as well as observed increases in climate-related impacts and risks in many regions, the “Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage” was established in 2013 and further supported through the Paris Agreement in 2015…
The State of the Netherlands v. Urgenda Foundation
On 9 October 2018, the Court of Appeal of The Hague (the Netherlands) upheld the District Court’s decision in the case of Urgenda , thus confirming the obligation of the Netherlands to reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by at least 25% by 2020 compared with levels in 1990. This case raised some of the thorniest issues in climate law. As the Netherlands is responsible for only a tiny fraction of global GHG emissions, is it right for a court…
Climate Assessment as an Emerging Obligation Under Customary International Law
Environmental assessment (EA) is established in most countries as a procedure to ensure that administrative authorities are aware of the environmental impacts likely to result from the activities they approve. Many jurisdictions have moved towards including consideration for climate change mitigation in EA. Through a review of the law and practice of various States, this article suggests that such Climate Assessment is now emerging as a norm of c…
Construing International Climate Change Law as a Compliance Regime
Under the no-harm principle, states must prevent activities within their jurisdiction from causing extraterritorial environmental harm. It has been argued elsewhere that excessive greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) from industrial states constitute a breach of this principle and instigate state responsibility. Yet, the relevance of general international law for climate change does not obviate a need for more specific international climate change agre…
International Law Obligations Arising in relation to Nationally Determined Contributions
This article analyzes the international law obligations that arise in relation to nationally determined contributions (NDCs). It argues that distinct and concurrent obligations arise from two separate sources. On the one hand, treaty obligations arise under the Paris Agreement, which imposes an obligation of conduct on parties: they must take adequate measures towards the realization of the mitigation targets contained in their NDCs. On the other…
Research Handbook on Climate Change, Migration and the Law
Contents: 1. Introduction Benoit Mayer and Francois Crepeau, Part I Perspectives on the climate-migration nexus 2. Climate-related migration and its linkages to vulnerability, adaptation, and socio-economic inequality: evidence from recent examples Robert McLeman 3. `Climate-induced migration': ways forward in the face of an intrinsically equivocal concept Calum T.M. Nicholson 4. Representation and misrepresentation of climate migrants Carol Farb…
Migration in the UNFCCC Workstream on Loss and Damage
Discourses on ‘climate migration’ have played an instrumental role in initiating negotiations on loss and damage under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Yet, to date, the framing of climate migration has not been clear: it has been considered as a tool for reducing loss and damage (hence essentially a form of adaptation) or, alternatively, as a source of loss and damage for the migrants or for other concerned com…
The Concept of Climate Migration
Advancing peace and respecting basic human rights? A narrow moral appraisal of international law
No abstract available. (Published: 9 December 2015) Citation: Ethics & Global Politics, Vol. 8, 2015,http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/egp.v8.28925
Climate Change Mitigation as an Obligation Under Human Rights Treaties
Judges and scholars have interpreted human rights treaties as obligating states to mitigate climate change by limiting their greenhouse gas emissions, an argument instrumental to the development of climate litigation. This Article questions the validity of this interpretation. A state's treaty obligation to protect human rights implies an obligation to cooperate on the mitigation of climate change, the Article argues, only if and inasmuch as clim…
The Duty of Care of Fossil-Fuel Producers for Climate Change Mitigation
On 26 May 2021, the District Court of The Hague (The Netherlands) passed an innovative judgment in Milieudefensie v. Royal Dutch Shell. The Court interpreted Shell's duty of care towards the inhabitants of the Netherlands as requiring it to mitigate climate change by reducing the carbon dioxide emissions resulting from its global operations by at least 45% by 2030, compared with 2019. This case comment salutes the identification of a corporate du…
Construing International Climate Change Law as a Compliance Regime
Under the no-harm principle, states must prevent activities within their jurisdiction from causing extraterritorial environmental harm. It has been argued elsewhere that excessive greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) from industrial states constitute a breach of this principle and instigate state responsibility. Yet, the relevance of general international law for climate change does not obviate a need for more specific international climate change agre…
International Law Obligations Arising in relation to Nationally Determined Contributions
This article analyzes the international law obligations that arise in relation to nationally determined contributions (NDCs). It argues that distinct and concurrent obligations arise from two separate sources. On the one hand, treaty obligations arise under the Paris Agreement, which imposes an obligation of conduct on parties: they must take adequate measures towards the realization of the mitigation targets contained in their NDCs. On the other…
State Responsibility and Climate Change Governance
Most excessive greenhouse gas emissions originate from developed States but the adverse impact of climate change is predominantly affecting developing States. This article submits that the law of State responsibility could provide important guidance for the development of the international regime on climate change. The failure of many States, in particular developed ones, to prevent excessive per capita emissions causing harm to global atmospheri…
Progression requirements applicable to state action on climate change mitigation under Nationally Determined Contributions
Climate Assessment as an Emerging Obligation Under Customary International Law
Environmental assessment (EA) is established in most countries as a procedure to ensure that administrative authorities are aware of the environmental impacts likely to result from the activities they approve. Many jurisdictions have moved towards including consideration for climate change mitigation in EA. Through a review of the law and practice of various States, this article suggests that such Climate Assessment is now emerging as a norm of c…
Request for an Advisory Opinion submitted by the Commission of Small Island States on Climate Change and International Law
Not only does this article gives exclusive power to the Indian parliament to implement any treaty to which India is a party, it also provides no exception to this power of the parliament.As such, the SCI should not have taken it upon itself to domesticate India's international law obligations.Doing so was a wide usurpation of legislative power by the SCI, and it makes this otherwise well-intentioned judgment a legally flawed one.Almost a decade a…
Prompting Climate Change Mitigation Through Litigation
Courts and scholars have interpreted open-ended legal norms as imposing due diligence obligations on States and other entities to mitigate climate change. These obligations can be applied in two alternative ways: through holistic decisions, where courts determine the level of mitigation action required of defendants; or through atomistic decisions, where courts identify some of the measures that the defendant must take. This article shows that, w…
The judicial assessment of states’ action on climate change mitigation
The Supreme Court of the Netherlands construed the state’s positive human rights obligations as requiring a 25 per cent reduction of its greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 compared with 1990 levels. This article explores how judges can decide the level of state effort required to mitigate climate change. To date, judges have predominantly approached this issue by seeking to identify an elusive benchmark, either by deduction from global objectives o…
Environmental Migration” as Advocacy
Can normative arguments for a governance of environ- mental migration succeed? The present analysis applies constructivist theories on norm entrepreneurship to the debate on the governance of environmental migration. Throughout the analysis, it appears that “environmental migration” is not constructed by one single, coherent norm entrepreneur. Rather, one may distinguish four normative enterprises that compete to use similar notions in the pursui…
Governing Environmentally-Related Migration in Bangladesh
Environmentally-related migration is often cited as one of the human consequences of environmental stress, especially in the context of climate change. Nonetheless, there is a lack of effective and appropriate governance strategies that address the issue due to the complex and multicausal character of environmentally-related migration and the tendency to discuss the issue through security-based discourses that favor alarmist narratives. This pape…
Global Migration Governance
How is migration governed, why is it so, and how could it realistically be improved? These are the main questions that Alexander Betts’ latest book addresses, making sense of the ‘fragmented and incoherent’ governance of migration. In contrast to oft-heard simplistic arguments ‘for better’ or ‘greater’ governance of migration, the book’s seventeen contributors develop a much needed compilation of information. This broad and thorough analysis will…
Migration in the 21st Century
Journal Article Migration in the 21st Century:Rights, Outcomes, and Policy Get access Maloney Thomas N Korinek KimMigration in the 21stCentury – Rights, Outcomes, and PolicyRoutledge, London and New York 2011xv + 288ppISBN 978-0-415-77914-2 Benoît Mayer Benoît Mayer National University of Singapore Faculty of Law Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Journal of Refugee Law, Volume 24, Issue 2, May …
Grant Dawson and Sonia Farber, Forcible Displacement Throughout the Ages
Journal Article Grant Dawson and Sonia Farber, Forcible Displacement Throughout the Ages: Towards an International Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Forcible Displacement Get access Grant Dawson and Sonia Farber, Forcible Displacement Throughout the Ages: Towards an International Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Forcible Displacement ( Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2012) xvi, 198 pp. €115 (Har…
Climate Change and International Law in the Grim Days
The 2009 Copenhagen Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC epitomizes the stalling of international negotiations on climate change mitigation and adaptation. In the grim days of climate change governance, the literature tends to neglect ethical arguments on the responsibility of polluting states. Rather, it turns to a desperate quest for ‘whatever works’. This article addresses the development of a discipline round an emerging regime. It reviews…
Governing Environmentally-Related Migration in Bangladesh
Environmentally-related migration is often cited as one of the human consequences of environmental stress, especially in the context of climate change. Nonetheless, there is a lack of effective and appropriate governance strategies that address the issue due to the complex and multicausal character of environmentally-related migration and the tendency to discuss the issue through security-based discourses that favor alarmist narratives. This pape…
Martin Ruhs, The Price of Rights
Journal Article Martin Ruhs, The Price of Rights: Regulating International Labor Migration Get access Martin Ruhs, The Price of Rights: Regulating International Labor Migration ( Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford, 2013, ix + 254 pp, $35.00/£24.95) ISBN 978-0-69-113291-4 (hb) Benoit Mayer Benoit Mayer PhD candidate, Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scho…
The Myth about Global Civil Society
1. The successful transnational campaign for the ban of landmines, which led to the 1997 Ottawa Treaty to Ban Anti-Personnel Landmines, has often been considered as the feat of arms of global civil society movements—the proof that, in the post-Cold War era, internationally co-ordinated non-governmental organizations could extend their influence even to the “high politics” of State security. Much has already been written to analyse this advocacy, …
State Responsibility and Climate Change Governance
Most excessive greenhouse gas emissions originate from developed States but the adverse impact of climate change is predominantly affecting developing States. This article submits that the law of State responsibility could provide important guidance for the development of the international regime on climate change. The failure of many States, in particular developed ones, to prevent excessive per capita emissions causing harm to global atmospheri…
Survival Migration
Alexander Betts notes that ‘many people fleeing human rights deprivations in fragile or failed states ... look very much like refugees and yet fall outside the definition of a refugee, often being denied protection’ (p. 2–3). Beyond ‘persecution’, Survival Migration pleads for an extension of the refugee regime to all individuals suffering grave deprivations of their most basic rights. Unlike McAdam (2012), Betts argues against ‘focusing on parti…
Realizing Whose Utopia? The Structure of Normative International Law Arguments
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Environmental Migration” as Advocacy
Can normative arguments for a governance of environ- mental migration succeed? The present analysis applies constructivist theories on norm entrepreneurship to the debate on the governance of environmental migration. Throughout the analysis, it appears that “environmental migration” is not constructed by one single, coherent norm entrepreneur. Rather, one may distinguish four normative enterprises that compete to use similar notions in the pursui…
The State of the World's Refugees 2012
Advancing peace and respecting basic human rights? A narrow moral appraisal of international law
No abstract available. (Published: 9 December 2015) Citation: Ethics & Global Politics, Vol. 8, 2015,http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/egp.v8.28925
The Law of Refugee Status
Stephanie Wolfe, The Politics of Reparations and Apologies
Stephanie Wolfe’s book explores how states come to terms with their involvement in past atrocities and how they respond to demands for reparation. The book discusses three particular cases, all dealing with atrocities committed during the Second World War: Germany following the Holocaust; the USA with regard to the internment of Japanese residents; and the question of Japan’s responsibility vis-à-vis comfort women. Through these case studies, Wol…
The Concept of Climate Migration
Research Handbook on Climate Change, Migration and the Law
Contents: 1. Introduction Benoit Mayer and Francois Crepeau, Part I Perspectives on the climate-migration nexus 2. Climate-related migration and its linkages to vulnerability, adaptation, and socio-economic inequality: evidence from recent examples Robert McLeman 3. `Climate-induced migration': ways forward in the face of an intrinsically equivocal concept Calum T.M. Nicholson 4. Representation and misrepresentation of climate migrants Carol Farb…
Migration in the UNFCCC Workstream on Loss and Damage
Discourses on ‘climate migration’ have played an instrumental role in initiating negotiations on loss and damage under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Yet, to date, the framing of climate migration has not been clear: it has been considered as a tool for reducing loss and damage (hence essentially a form of adaptation) or, alternatively, as a source of loss and damage for the migrants or for other concerned com…
Construing International Climate Change Law as a Compliance Regime
Under the no-harm principle, states must prevent activities within their jurisdiction from causing extraterritorial environmental harm. It has been argued elsewhere that excessive greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) from industrial states constitute a breach of this principle and instigate state responsibility. Yet, the relevance of general international law for climate change does not obviate a need for more specific international climate change agre…
International Law Obligations Arising in relation to Nationally Determined Contributions
This article analyzes the international law obligations that arise in relation to nationally determined contributions (NDCs). It argues that distinct and concurrent obligations arise from two separate sources. On the one hand, treaty obligations arise under the Paris Agreement, which imposes an obligation of conduct on parties: they must take adequate measures towards the realization of the mitigation targets contained in their NDCs. On the other…
Science for Loss and Damage. Findings and Propositions
The debate on “Loss and Damage” (L&D) has gained traction over the last few years. Supported by growing scientific evidence of anthropogenic climate change amplifying frequency, intensity and duration of climate-related hazards as well as observed increases in climate-related impacts and risks in many regions, the “Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage” was established in 2013 and further supported through the Paris Agreement in 2015…
The State of the Netherlands v. Urgenda Foundation
On 9 October 2018, the Court of Appeal of The Hague (the Netherlands) upheld the District Court’s decision in the case of Urgenda , thus confirming the obligation of the Netherlands to reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by at least 25% by 2020 compared with levels in 1990. This case raised some of the thorniest issues in climate law. As the Netherlands is responsible for only a tiny fraction of global GHG emissions, is it right for a court…
Climate Assessment as an Emerging Obligation Under Customary International Law
Environmental assessment (EA) is established in most countries as a procedure to ensure that administrative authorities are aware of the environmental impacts likely to result from the activities they approve. Many jurisdictions have moved towards including consideration for climate change mitigation in EA. Through a review of the law and practice of various States, this article suggests that such Climate Assessment is now emerging as a norm of c…
Liability and Compensation for Marine Plastic Pollution
The UN General Assembly and the UN Environment Assembly (UNEA) have expressed concerns about the pollution of the sea by plastics, which adversely impacts ecosystems, some economic activities (e.g., tourism and fishing), and possibly public health (e.g., consumption of contaminated fish). In December 2017, the UNEA decided to establish the Ad Hoc Open-Ended Expert Group on Marine Litter and Microplastics to examine ways to combat marine plastic p…
Ejil Roll of Honour; 2021 Ejil Peer Reviewer Prize; Changes in the Masthead; Germany v Italy
Political science (35 works) · Law (21 works) · Law (18 works) · Environmental law and policy (17 works) · Climate change (16 works) · Economics (14 works) · Sociology (14 works) · Law and economics (12 works) · Business (11 works) · Climate Change and Geoengineering (11 works)