Law and Climate change: An analysis from information metrics

Abstract

Climate change is an increasingly present reality, as the resulting environmental conditions have already begun to negatively affect the ability to grow enough food to meet the rapid growth of populations. Such changes have an immediate reflection of intensifying the need for the management of environmental risks by law, through the construction of observations, bonds and decisions about the future. In order to analyze what has already been published on the subjects Law and climate change together, a scientometric analysis was performed in the Web of Science database, guided by certain operational and analytical criteria. The study portfolio consisted of 94 articles, whose analyzes were based on bibliometric and sociometric aspects. The results showed that, in recent decades, the effects of climate change have aroused the interest of researchers in the field of Law and not only in the natural sciences. Moreover, although the theme analyzed permeates different areas of knowledge, it was observed that most investigations analyzed (70%) are the responsibility of a single author. The countries from which such studies come from include the United States and Australia, while the predominant affiliations refer to the University of Melbourne, the University College London (UCL) and the Chinese University of Hong Kong. It is also evident that the predominant approaches in the studies can be classified into four clusters with strong association links. These point to aspects concerning resilience and adaptation, law, international policies and protocols, as well as governance directed to the legal aspects of climate change. Thus, the study contributes through the investigation of an emerging field of study through research methods based on information science, from which the state of the art of scientific research on Law and climate change was characterized.