General Resources
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: Created in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the objective of the IPCC is to provide governments at all levels with scientific information that they can use to develop climate policies.
The IPCC’s Fifth Assessment (2013-2014) is the most recent.
The IPCC’s Sixth Assessment is in process now.
United Nations: Treaties, international agreements, and associated documents. Search template for the UN’s Official Documents System (ODS) accessed through Documents page. ODS contains conference of the parties (COP) documents.
U.S. 4th National Climate Assessment (U.S.), Volume I (2017)
U.S. 4th National Climate Assessment (U.S.), Volume II (2018) – Chapter 19 addresses issues in the Southeastern U.S., including a case study of Charleston’s sea level rise.
Flood Factor: Site enables searching of individual addresses to get an assessment of flood risk. Sponsored by First Street Foundation. First Street Foundation is a non-profit research and technology group defining America’s flood risk. (Get a data set for Charleston by entering Charleston, South Carolina in the search box on the home page.)
World Trade Organization’s Environmental Database: contains all environment-related notifications submitted by WTO members as well as environmental measures and policies mentioned in the Trade Policy Reviews of WTO members.
Thomas Cooper Databases: Access from Thomas Cooper’s database page.
GreenFILE: The Thomas Cooper Library does not have a database specifically dedicated to international environmental law, but GreenFILE recognizes “international environmental law” as a subject term. Best research strategy: Select the GreenFILE database from Cooper’s database page. When you get the search template, choose “subject terms” from the “Select a Field” dropdown menu and type “international environmental law” into the accompanying search box. Use other Boolean fields if needed. Use options in left-hand sidebar to filter results.
Agricultural and Environmental Sciences Collection: Best search strategy: Access database and type in the search box (example: international climate). The search engine’s auto-complete feature will populate a number of choices, so you can select one if you find one you like, but you can also run a keyword search without selecting any of the suggested choices. Use options in left-hand sidebar to filter results. Note that the results in this database contain dissertations. Warning: this database is not guaranteed to offer a full-text format for every result discovered.
ASFA: Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Abstracts: includes environmental law on water environments. Note that this database primarily contains abstracts, but the records frequently lead to pdfs of original documents.
Jstor: archive of scholarly articles from numerous fields of study. Access through the law library’s electronic resource link or from Thomas Cooper’s database page.
Research Guide: Environmental issues frequently overlap with business and economic issues. Thomas Cooper Library offers a research guide to international business & statistics – free web resources, Cooper databases for international business, brief instructions on navigating the databases
Bibliographies
Bibliographies, although they become outdated fairly quickly, are good starting points to use in finding resources. Bibliographies will give you listings of resources on a given topic. If they have become outdated, you can check the catalog for more current editions of the resources listed. You can search for bibliographies in the USC Libraries catalog. In the search bar at the top of the page, type: bibliography climate change. Restrict the date if you only want current entries.
Many of these resources are online, and most of the physical volumes will be located outside of the law library. We share our new catalog system with the entire borrowing consortium of SC academic libraries, so to filter results by library use the “Library” filter on the left-hand sidebar of your catalog results.
Examples:
Global climate change pathfinder: a guide to information sources
Print resource available at Thomas Cooper Library, Call Number QC981.8 .C5 P54 1992
VULNERABILITY ASSESSMENT METHODOLOGIES: AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE FISHERIES AND AQUACULTURE SECTOR
William Barsley ; Cassandra De Young ; Cécile Brugère
FAO fisheries and aquaculture circular, 2013-01-01 (1083), p.I
… PREPARATION OF THIS DOCUMENT This circular contains a comprehensive annotated bibliography of vulnerability methodologies specific to climate change…(online resource)
Global sea level rise scenarios for the United States National Climate Assessment
Parris, Adam, author.; United States. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Climate Program Office, issuing body.
2012 (online resource – pdf)
If you don’t find anything you like in the catalog, a Google search will also turn up bibliographies. Publishers, government agencies, and academic institutions might be the providers. Suggested search: bibliography climate change
Examples:
Penn State: https://sites.psu.edu/helpclimatechange/bibliography/
NOAA: https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/1369
NYU: https://www.nyulawglobal.org/globalex/Climate_Change_Bibliography1.html
Law-Related Resources
Hein Online: Scholarly archive of pdf documents; contains databases for international treaties and agreements, as well as UN documents collection. Also contains documents related to international environmental law. Best search strategy: conduct a catalog search within Hein for international environmental.
Access through the law library’s electronic resource link or from Thomas Cooper’s database page.
American Society of International Law (ASIL): Good collection of general information; some access restricted to members. Topics section offers pages on International Law and Climate Change (currently under development) and Environment, Health, Science, & Technology, and International Economics; contains links to agreements and reports.
Lexis: Practice Area on International Law (no practice area specifically for international environmental law).
Congressional Research Service (CRS): Search for “climate change” in the search box on the homepage. Results filtered on the left-hand sidebar
House of Representatives: Get hearings on climate change. From search bar in upper right of homepage, type: hearing climate change (works on any other keyword, such as sustainability)
ProQuest Congressional: Research tool accessed through the law library’s electronic resources page. Access to congressional documents and activity, including bills, committee reports, transcripts of testimony from congressional hearings, and debates and statements from members of Congress. Full-text information can be retrieved using search terms or document numbers. Most productive search strategy to get hearings on the Fourth National Climate Assessment: The ProQuest Congressional homepage will likely default to “Congressional Publications.” Accept this default and use the link for the “Advanced” search. In the “Content Types” on the left-hand sidebar, uncheck everything but Hearings, CRS Reports, and House and Senate Documents/Reports. In the search box in the upper middle of the screen, type “Fourth National Climate Assessment” (typing 4th doesn’t work as well). Using the dropdown for “in” change the location to Anywhere. You won’t need to set the date because the Fourth National Climate Assessment was done in 2018, so won’t come up in other time frames.
State or Municipal Climate Change Lawsuits
On September 9, 2020, the City of Charleston filed a lawsuit against 24 fossil fuel corporations over issues related to climate change. Other municipalities and states have filed their own climate change suits. The Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law maintains a page that tracks these cases. The site also offers a portal to non-US climate litigation. Information on the recent US state/city lawsuits can be found in the link for “Common Law Claims” in the portal for U.S. Climate Change Litigation.
Michael Burger, Executive Director of the Sabin Center, writes extensively on climate change law. You can find a list of his selected publications here. If you can’t link directly to an article from this list, use the citation information to search in the online database service of your choice. If that doesn’t get you access to the article, contact a member of the reference team in your law library for help.
Sher Edling LLP is the law firm that represents the plaintiffs in several of these climate change actions by states or municipalities. The firm has posted a collection of documents related to this litigation.
The US Energy Information Administration has created a profile for South Carolina (and the other states). This profile provides data on energy use, resources, and industry in the state.
The EPA provides data on greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector, and has created a portal containing information about greenhouse gases and emissions in the U.S.
Surging Seas Risk Finder: maintained by the non-profit Climate Central, this site offers data and mapping tools that visualize an area’s flood risk, social vulnerability, population, income, and other variables. Get data and map indicators for Charleston by entering the city’s name in the search box on the landing page.
City-data.com: The site includes interactive data tools that let you mix and match numerous variables and generate online reports, as well as provides pre-made data sets if you enter a location (City of Charleston, Charleston County).
Research Guide: Thomas Cooper offers a guide on geospacial and climate data. Geospatial means relating to or denoting data that is associated with a particular location (like Charleston, SC).
Journal Article: Shana Jones, Thomas Ruppert, Erin L. Deady, Heather Payne, J. Scott Pippin, & Ling-Yee Huang, Jason M. Evans, Roads to Nowhere in Four States: State and Local Governments in the Atlantic Southeast Facing Sea-Level Rise, 44 Colum. J. Envtl. L. 67, 70 (2019)
This Article uses roads as a case study to explore how sea-level rise is altering planning, maintenance, and funding for public infrastructure. South Carolina is one of the four states that were studied for the article. Article is available on Westlaw, Lexis, and Hein Online.
Think Tanks: Websites and Resources: offer research data, blogs, articles, videos, commentary, and analysis. These are largely economically oriented research operations, engaged more in popularization rather than basic research, so make your own decisions about word-searching the environment versus climate change, etc.
Brookings Institute: “The Brookings Institution is a nonprofit public policy organization based in Washington, DC. Our mission is to conduct in-depth research that leads to new ideas for solving problems facing society at the local, national and global level.” Website offers links for global development and international affairs.
Center for Strategic and International Studies: “The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) is a bipartisan, nonprofit policy research organization dedicated to advancing practical ideas to address the world’s greatest challenges.”
American Enterprise Institute: “The American Enterprise Institute is a public policy think tank dedicated to defending human dignity, expanding human potential, and building a freer and safer world.”
The Cato Institute: “The Cato Institute is a public policy research organization — a think tank — dedicated to the principles of individual liberty, limited government, free markets, and peace. Its scholars and analysts conduct independent, nonpartisan research on a wide range of policy issues.”
Peterson Institute for International Economics: “The Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) is an independent nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization dedicated to strengthening prosperity and human welfare in the global economy through expert analysis and practical policy solutions.” Offers research, blogs, news
Copyright 2020–21 © David Linnan.