Recent ABA Abroad Column on "Making the global case for climate rule of law"



The recent ABA Abroad Column highlights Jay Monteverde's former roles as deputy director of ABA ROLI's Beijing, China office and ABA ROLI’s director of global environmental programming. For six years, Jay managed ROLI’s programs in China. When he relocated to ROLI’s Washington, D.C.-based headquarters to expand its global environmental rule of law programs, his primary focus included environmental rule of law capacity building, legislative reform and increasing public participation, and access to justice.

"One such program I have had the great privilege to help build is the global lead paint elimination project.

Through that project, ROLI and partners, led by UN Environment, promote environmental health by assisting countries to draft laws restricting lead in paint. These restrictions allow countries to better protect children’s cognitive and development potential—children’s intellectual birthright. I am extremely proud to have helped ROLI address this and other critical environmental rule of law problems.

In the past two years of developing ROLI’s environmental programs, I have endeavored to create projects focusing on another birthright of future generations: the fundamental right to a safe climate capable of supporting human life. I felt it urgent to work on the tremendous global warming challenge, as the warming-generated climate crisis poses an existential threat to every single one of us and to all living things collectively. It endangers the most basic aspects of our planet’s habitability, including water availability, food security and a temperature range that can sustain human life.

By threatening the very foundations of life, global warming sends destabilizing tremors up through society’s building blocks, institutions and systems. Today’s youth and the generations to come will face the worst consequences.

The principles for which ROLI stands—including the rule of law as a means to promote justice, economic opportunity and human dignity—are vulnerable to this destabilization. The UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights has warned of a coming “climate apartheid,” a social Darwinian dystopia where only those with financial means can truly survive a hotter planet while everyone else suffers from lethal heat waves, severe storms, disease, food insecurity and lack of water access."

Read the full article, "Making the global case for climate rule of law," written by Jay Monteverde, former ABA ROLI staffer and current staff attorney at Our Children’s Trust.

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