International Law Beyond the Holocene Assumption: The Conceptual Legacy of the ILA Committee on Sea Level Rise

Abstract This article distils the conceptual legacy of the International Law Association (ILA) Committee on International Law and Sea Level Rise (2012–2024). It traces the Committee’s normative trajectory from early deliberations to proposals articulated in four reports (2016, 2018, 2022 and 2024) and reflected in ILA resolutions adopted in 2018 and 2024. The broader context—namely, the international law discipline’s movement from a Holocene assumption of relative geophysical stability, including of coastline geography, to Anthropocene conditions of accelerated Earth system change—is explained. Relatedly, the article shows how legal stability and certainty emerged through the Committee’s work as a cross-cutting meta-norm aimed at preserving continuity across the three domains on which the Committee focused: (i) maritime entitlements, limits, and boundaries; (ii) statehood; and (iii) the protection of persons and human rights in the context of climate change-related sea-level rise. The article explains how the Committee framed sea-level rise as a systemic legal challenge and how it operationalised the response through a thematic organisation and a temporal sequencing—involving near-term clarification within existing law and mid- to longer-term transformation of structural norms. It also notes the resonance of the Committee’s concepts and proposals in practice, including in regional declarations, in debates within the United Nations, and in the work of the International Law Commission (ILC) Study Group on Sea-Level Rise. The article concludes that the Committee’s approach offers a model for adapting structural norms in practice—anchored in legal stability, equity, and international cooperation—without collapsing the architecture of international law as the planet departs from stable Holocene conditions.