The International Climate Legal Regime and the Role of the AFOLU Sector

It has been years now that the scientific community is warning about the gravity of climate change consequences and about the need to effectively respond to it. However, the climate crisis just seems to get worse over time. Facing this crisis is terribly difficult for at least two reasons. Firstly, climate change is a phenomenon which is both transnational and global in its nature, hence all relevant international actors will need to cooperate with each other in order to address it. Secondly, there is a number of sectors contributing to the global emission of greenhouse gasses (GHG) worldwide, so that all sectors will have to do their part in order to mitigate their climate impact. There is a sector in particular, the sector of agriculture, forestry and other land use (AFOLU) that, despite being one of the major sources of pollution worldwide, has usually been disregarded when it came to take climate change mitigation action. Therefore, this research has decided to focus on the international regulation of the AFOLU sector, in order to understand whether and how it is addressed with the aim of reducing GHG emissions.