Risk, resilience and inequality: using law to build resilience to climate change impacts

The impacts of climate change are likely to affect virtually every ecosystem on earth and aspect of human endeavour (Field et al, 2014). The level of committed climate change means that some impacts will continue to occur long after mitigation efforts have reduced or reversed current rates of greenhouse gas concentrations. The slower and weaker those efforts, the more enduring and emphatic the impacts are likely to be. While the outcomes of the Paris Agreement of the UNFCCC suggest a more ambitious target for climate mitigation (Cornwall, 2015), it will still be some time before success can be judged and then for the effects of emissions reductions to be realised.