By Korey Silverman-Roati Background Starting in 2017, cities, counties, and states across the United States have filed claims (see here and here) in state courts against fossil fuel companies seeking redress for the climate harms their products have caused. Many of these cases asserted nuisance and other tort law claims. […]
climate litigation
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Climate Litigation in Latin America and the Caribbean: launching a regional Platform for Climate Litigation By Maria Antonia Tigre, Florencia Ortúzar, Javier Dávalos With the largest rainforest in the world, the largest freshwater reserves on the planet and the most significant amount of arable land where food is produced, the […]
A look back at significant decisions in climate litigation in 2021 By Maria Antonia Tigre 2021 was a significant year for climate litigation, with several decisions worldwide providing a fresh look at stakeholder responsibility for climate change. The verdicts have shown that courts increasingly recognize climate change as a human […]
IEA v. Brazil: When a court accepts the legally disruptive nature of climate change By Maria Antonia Tigre, Délton Winter de Carvalho and Joana Setzer On December 07, 2021, the Federal Regional Court of the Fourth Region (TRF4) – one of Brazil’s federal courts of appeal – decided what should […]
A new climate litigation claim in Brazil raises the pressure for increased climate action and protection of the Amazon rainforest By Maria Antonia Tigre On October 26, 2021, Observatório do Clima (OC), a network of 71 civil society organizations, filed a class action at the federal court of Amazonas against […]
By Korey Silverman-Roati Litigators responded to the Trump administration’s climate deregulation agenda by filing hundreds of lawsuits across the U.S. over the four years of the administration. A new Sabin Center White Paper published today, U.S. Climate Litigation in the Age of Trump: Full Term, takes stock of 378 U.S. […]
On Earth Day, citizens all around the world make a concerted effort to reflect upon their relationship with nature, and collectively share what specific actions we can take to protect our planet against threats such as air and water pollution, deforestation, species decline, extreme weather events, and more — all of which are exacerbated by climate change.
The “Rights of Nature” movement is fundamentally rethinking humanity’s relationship with nature, and it is gaining momentum. It is led by activists advocating for ecosystems such as rivers, lakes, and mountains to bear legal rights in the same, or at least a similar, manner as human beings. This movement is striving for a paradigm shift in which nature is placed at the center and humans are connected to it in an interdependent way, rather than a dominant one. How would such a legal system work, and could giving rights to nature help in the legal battle against climate change? A few case studies offer some insight.
By Michael Burger and Jessica Wentz As you know, in Juliana v. United States twenty-one individual youth plaintiffs filed a lawsuit in federal district court in Oregon against the United States, the president, and various other federal officials and agencies, claiming that the “nation’s climate system” is critical to their […]