Summary 

This research examines two broad approaches to climate change legislation: sectoral legislation and framework legislation. Some benefits of sectoral legislation are that it may be quicker to implement and may be more targeted. Framework legislation may be beneficial for broader implementation across government, to facilitate progress and accountability towards long-term objectives, aid consensus building, has a strong signalling effect -both internally (nationally) and externally (internationally), and enables a more stable political trajectory. 

Countries may benefit from a sectoral approach, a framework approach or a combined approach. In addition, countries may develop and adopt climate policies. Some considerations on the benefits of taking a policy route vs legislative route are offered. The research then presents various countries’ approaches and sets out key takeaways, such as the risk of climate-related provisions being overshadowed in sectoral legislation and the ability to back up policies and plans through concrete enforcement mechanisms in framework legislation. It also identifies some regional initiatives that it might be useful to leverage to formulate climate legislation that is fit for purpose from both international and domestic perspectives. 

Introduction 

This research discusses the following: 

1. Section 1: Reasons for adopting climate change laws and considerations on the benefits of the legislative vs policy route; 

2. Section 2: Different approaches taken to climate change laws; 

3. Section 3: the African Model Climate Change Law; and 

4. Section 4: the legislative corpus on climate change – a comparative study on good legislative and parliamentary practices to implement the Paris Agreement (in Francophone countries, and currently only available in French). 

Throughout the memo we discuss two different types of climate legislation, namely sectoral and framework climate laws. These are defined as follows:  

• Sectoral legislation/law refers to legislation (passed by parliament) solely aimed at introducing a climate policy response for a given sector, or governing specific issue areas that have climate change requirements or considerations grafted within them. Many such laws are introduced through amendments to pre-existing legislation.

• Framework legislation/law in the context of climate law refers to an important subset of climate laws that link national and international agendas. Such laws share some or all of the following characteristics:

• passed by the legislative branch of government;  

• lay down general principles and obligations for climate change policymaking in a nation-state (or sub-state entity), with the explicit aim of reducing GHG emissions in relevant sectors through specific measures to be implemented at a later stage;

• set out national, long-term and/or short-term/interim targets and/or sectoral targets and/or pathways for change;  

• are multi-sectoral in scope; 

• set the agenda for a country’s climate policy response; 

• establishing institutions, or amending the functions of existing ones; 

• are comprehensive yet might not offer a complete treatment of all issues, instead establishing institutional structures that facilitate and guide future policy making;

• establish processes to enable government action on climate change and give mandates to relevant actors to develop/revise further laws, regulations, policies etc.;  

• establish mechanisms for transparency and/or accountability.  

We note from the IPCC’s 6^th Assessment Report, Working Group III, that “climate laws require further research, including on the quantification of impact, framework versus sectoral approaches, and the various mechanisms through which laws act – target setting, creating institutional structures, mainstreaming and ensuring compliance.”