Strengthening Scholarship in Research on Implementation and Enforcement Architecture for Carbon Dioxide Emissions Reduction through Postdoctoral Research Programme

Abstract

Climate change and global warming impacts are manifesting on a daily basis all over the world. Reports of the catastrophic weather events are always being aired in the news showing huge and massive destruction to property and life. Carbon emissions by both industrialised and non-industrialised nations are the main causes of global warming and climate change. While the developed nations are making frantic efforts through innovations and technologies to adapt to the changes in the climate, the developing countries do not have the capacity to develop such technologies hence unable to adapt to the climate change, leaving them with mitigation options. Against this backdrop, the school of law, on the initiative of the Dean, Faculty of Management and Law, University of Limpopo, South Africa has developed a postdoctoral research programme. Under the programme, study to address the issues of carbon emissions from the perspectives of implementation and enforcement of legal and policy frameworks on emissions reduction will be conducted. To achieve this, there is need to involve a postdoctoral research fellow that will work in conjunction with the programme leader. Pursuant to this, the study seeks to investigate how implementation and enforcement of policy and law on carbon emissions reduction could be strengthened as part of mitigation strategy. The study highlights the importance of capacity building and development in the areas of climate law and policy in order to position staff members of government and private institutions on how to ensure credible and sustainable implementation and enforcement of emissions reduction policy and legal frameworks. To this end, the need for high quality training of postgraduate students under the programme at the university will invariably capacitate the students and make them to become experts, thereby making them to provide services to emitters on how to curb their emissions and consequences for failure to comply.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n14p819