Burkett, Maxine (Former Faculty)

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10125/35625

https://law.hawaii.edu/people/maxine-a-burkett/

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Now showing 1 - 20 of 23

Just Solutions to Climate Change: A Climate Justice Proposal for a Domestic Clean Development Mechanism
(2008) Burkett, Maxine
Small Island States and the Paris Agreement
(Wilson Center, 2015) Burkett, Maxine
In Search of Refuge: Pacific Islands, Climate-Induced Migration, and the Legal Frontier
(Honolulu: East-West Center, 2011) Burkett, Maxine
‘Drowning Nations’ Threaten New 21st Century Statelessness
(ALERTNET, 2011) Burkett, Maxine
Justice and Contemporary Climate Relocation: An Addendum to Words of Caution on ‘Climate Refugees
(Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program, 2016) Burkett, Maxine
Shoreline Impacts, Setback Policy and Sea Level Rise
(Center for Island Climate Adaptation, 2009) Burkett, Maxine; Hwang, D.
Reading between the Red Lines: Loss and Damage and the Paris Outcome
(Climate Law, 2016) Burkett, Maxine
Litigating Climate Change Adaptation: Theory Practice, and Corrective (Climate) Justice
(Environmental Law Reporter News and Analysis, 2012) Burkett, Maxine
Climate Disobedience
(Duke Environmental Law and Policy Forum, 2016) Burkett, Maxine
Behind the Veil: Climate Migration, Regime Shift, and a New Theory of Justice
(Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, 2018) Burkett, Maxine
Small Island States and the Paris Agreement
(Wilson Center, 2015-12) Burkett, Maxine
Islands predominated in the Paris COP negotiations.[1] From metaphor to moral compass to declarations of kinship—like President Obama’s the small island developing states’ vulnerability, dignity, and ambitions served as a rudder. Among other significant provisions discussed below, the response of the Agreement and the decision text—the latter a supporting though not legally binding document—and to demands for capacity building and efficient, simplified procedures for accessing financial resources directly addressed small islands’ concerns. And so the closing movements of the meetings offered congratulatory and hortatory words from island representatives, including a spontaneous, harmonized chorus of Bob Marley’s Three Little Birds stressing the refrain, “Every little thing is gonna be alright."[2] Small island states representatives are, however, clear-eyed about the potential of the Paris Agreement and understand that it is but a foothold in a much, much steeper journey. In Paris they were represented primarily by the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) negotiating bloc, a coalition of small island and low-lying coastal countries that share similar development challenges and concerns about the environment, especially their vulnerability to the adverse effects of global climate change. AOSIS, with 44 members and observers from all regions of the world, works as a negotiating voice for small island developing states (SIDS). The small islands representatives demanded a number of elements, including a long-term temperature goal of “well below 1.5 degrees” Celsius above pre-industrial levels, an indicative pathway to achieve it, an international mechanism on Loss and Damage due to climate-related events, and scaled-up, reliable financial resources above the $100 billion per year by 2020 already promised by developed countries to developing nations, particularly the most vulnerable.
Climate-induced migration and the role of philanthropy
(Alliance Magazine, 2016-06) Burkett, Maxine
We are now in a ʻno-analogue’ state according to University of Hawaioceanography professor, Dr Richard Zeebe. In other words, in the documented history of our planet, we have not seen the amount of carbon released combined with the speed with which we are depositing it in the atmosphere. We are entering a future without precedent.
Rehabilitation: A Proposal for a Climate Compensation Mechanism for Small Island States
(Santa Clara Jounral of International Law, 2015) Burkett, Maxine
For over two decades, the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) has attempted to craft a funding mechanism that would address loss and damage resulting from climate change. With a steady drumbeat, AOSIS has developed and advocated a three-pronged proposal, emphasizing the need for more robust approaches to (i) disaster risk reduction and management, (ii) risk transfer, that is, shifting risk from one to another through insurance, and (iii) compensation and rehabilitation. Relative to the urgency and enormity of the climate crisis, the overall package is underdeveloped, with some members of the international community expressing reservation or outright resistance to its evolution. Comparatively speaking,however, the former two prongs have received more attention, with risk transfer or insurance being the most developed element of the proposal. As the specter of irreversible, slow-onset events-such as sea level rise, drought, and ocean acidification looms larger and more concrete, means for rehabilitating vulnerable island states has become particularly important. In this article, Professor Burkett explores the crucial elements of a funding mechanism to address the significant impacts of slow-onset events on small island states and provides a rationale for a compensation and rehabilitation mechanism, as well as a proposed framework for implementing it.
Loss and Damage
(2014) Burkett, Maxine A.
This article explores so-called ‘loss and damage’ as well as the emerging legal infrastructure that seeks to address it. The article concludes by identifying some of the deep points of contention in the international discourse on loss and damage, particularly regarding compensation, and considerations for a successful resolution of the impasse that loss and damage has produced.
Strategic Voting and African-Americans: True Vote, True Representation, True Power for, the Black Community
(2003) Burkett, Maxine A.
Reconciliation and Nonrepetition: A New Paradigm for African-American Reparations
(2007) Burkett, Maxine A.
The contemporary paradigm for African-American reparations fundamentally fails to address what should be its most vital component. Of the three essential elements of a successful reparations campaign-apology, award, and nonrepetition through reconciliation-the most vital is nonrepetition. In past "successful" reparations campaigns, the offending parties have issued apologies and awards, but have neither challenged nor dismantled the attitudes or infrastructures from which wrongful acts emerged, leaving open the likelihood of wrongful acts occurring again. Any campaign that neglects the nonrepetition element runs the risk of strengthening the status quo. In this Article, Professor Burkett argues that in order for a reparations campaign to be a true success for African-Americans, it must include a nonrepetition element. To do so, the reparations movement must embrace a reconciliation model that is forward looking, and concerned with the methods of deterring future bad acts for ultimate, complete, and successful repair. In the current discourse on African-American reparations, Professor Burkett argues, nonrepetition through reconciliation is woefully underemphasized. The incorporation of the nonrepetition element is particularly important in the American context. From the nation's earliest days, the American political and economic landscape has evolved in a particularly pernicious manner, creating and entrenching a racial and economic hierarchy that persistently subjugates African-Americans and other of-color and lowincome communities. Professor Burkett argues that in this context, a multiracial, multiethnic, and cross-class reconciliation model is vital to the success of the African-American campaign. This broad-based approach, the author maintains, is the only way to ensure nonrepetition.
The Climate of Environmental Justice: Taking Stock
(2007) Burkett, Maxine A.
Just Solutions to Climate Change: A Climate Justice Proposal for a Domestic Clean Development Mechanism
(2008) Burkett, Maxine A.
A Justice Paradox: On Climate Change, Small Island Developing States, and the Quest for Effective Legal Remedy
(2013) Burkett, Maxine A.
Despite their clear and significant vulnerability to climate change, small island developing states have not had the opportunity to pursue in earnest a remedy for the impacts of that change. All small island developing states face significant challenges to their economic well-being and the availability of basic resources-including food and water. Some face the loss of habitability of their entire territory. Identifying and implementing adequate repair will be difficult enough. After at least two decades of knowledge of these impacts, however, small island developing states still face the equally difficult task of just getting their claims heard. This is not for want of trying. Indeed, there has been extensive research and scholarship as well as abbreviated attempts in international fora to hold large emitters accountable. These have not been effective. Further, the latest attempt to clarify the legal responsibility of the largest emitters has been met with threats of reprisal by those large emitters. This kind of intimidation, coupled with a weak international legal regime at base, delays justice for small island developing states. In this article, Professor Burkett explores the failure of the legal regime to provide adequate process and substantive remedy for small island developing states-either through the absence of viable legal theories, capacity constraints, or uneven power dynamics in the international arena-or all three. She argues, however, that the costs of pursuing these claims-and other novel approaches she outlines in the article-are dwarfed by the costs to small island communities of unabated climate impacts. In surveying the possible claims and introducing new approaches, Professor Burkett attempts to respond to a striking and persistent (if unsurprising) justice paradox: the current international legal regime forecloses any reasonable attempts at a remedy for victims of climate change who are the most vulnerable and the least responsible.
The Nation Ex-Situ: On Climate Change, Deterritorialized Nationhood and the Post-climate Era
(2011) Burkett, Maxine A.
It is plausible that the impacts of climate change will render certain nation-states uninhabitable before the close of the century. While this may be the fate of a small number of those nation-states most vulnerable to climate change, its implications for the evolution of statehood and international law in a "post-climate" regime is potentially seismic. I argue that to respond to the phenomenon of landless nationstates, international law could accommodate an entirely new category of international actors. I introduce the Nation Ex-Situ. Ex-situ nationhood is a status that allows for the continued existence of a sovereign state, afforded all of the rights and benefits of sovereignty amongst the family of states, in perpetuity. In practice this would require the creation of a government framework that could exercise authority over a diffuse people. I elaborate on earlier calls to use a political trusteeship system to provide the framework for an analogous structure. I seek to accomplish two quite different but intimately related tasks: first, to define and justify the recognition of deterritorialized nation-states, and, second, to explain the trusteeship arrangement that will undergird the ex-situ nation. In doing so, I introduce the notion of a post-climate era, in which the very structure of human systems-be they legal, economic, or socio-political-are irrevocably changed and ever-changing.

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