Temporality in Climate Law

Combating climate change and transforming society and the economy to become climate neutral are currently among the greatest and most urgent challenges, not only at national level but also globally. However, despite global efforts to limit global warming to a temperature increase of 1.5C, as stipulated in the Paris Agreement, there is still a lack of concrete legal measures both at global and national levels to achieve the necessary emission reductions. The prevailing lack of a specific legal basis for emission reduction measures in Austria forms a major obstacle for decision-makers at administrative and judicial level to already consider aspects of climate change mitigation even if general legal acts indicate that amendments of the relevant legislation will be unavoidable (and also mandatory due to EU law) soon. This is particularly problematic because the legal effects of the decisions taken at this point in time also extend to the future, even if the necessary legal changes are implemented soon afterwards and will lead to claims for compensation if revoked or, in some cases, even the irrevocability of the decision. From a legal perspective, this raises not only the question of what legal changes are necessary to implement effective climate protection measures, but also how to deal with individual decisions that have been made up to that point and, for example, approve greenhouse gas-intensive activities, and which legal changes at national level are necessary to enable decision-makers to already take into account in individual proceedings that (based on EU law requirements alone) comprehensive emission reductions must be achieved in the future. The research project thus analyses the temporal structure of legal decision-making in climate-related individual administrative procedures, also with a specific focus on the EU law dimension of the research agenda. It investigates the potentials and limitations of implementing an intertemporal approach to climate-related decision-making in individual procedures and examines the possibilities of a subsequent amendment of decisions that approve greenhouse-gas intensive activities.