International law needs to develop to keep pace with climate change.

It is creating new legal challenges for countries and communities, including unavoidable climate change-related loss and damage.

The biggest challenge globally is to agree and design a fair and effective new climate change agreement, which will involve tackling issues that have never been tackled before.

Finding solutions should involve exploring new ideas and considering lessons from different areas of law. Transitional justice is one area that may provide lessons and ideas for climate change.

Transitional justice refers to processes and mechanisms used in countries and societies that are trying to make a transition from violent conflict or large-scale human rights abuses to peace and reconciliation.

It includes criminal prosecutions, truth processes, reparations for victims and governance reforms.

There are great differences between most of the climate change-related challenges referred to here and the terrible situations faced by countries and communities that are trying to confront and move forward from conflict and violence, but experience and ideas from transitional justice could help develop responses to climate change, including at the global level.

There are also areas where transitional justice is directly relevant to climate change-related challenges.

For the complete article, please see Responding to Climate Change.