With frustration mounting over political inaction to keep the world from overheating, legal action particularly in the U.S. is growing as an alternative.
The number of climate change cases more than doubled to 2,180 last year, up from 884 in 2017, the U.N. Environment Program and Columbia University's Sabin Center for Climate Change Law reported on Thursday.
The report notes that as climate litigation increases in frequency and volume, the body of legal precedent grows, forming an increasingly well-defined field of law.
Many of the cases challenge government decisions that are inconsistent with their legal obligations under the 2015 Paris Agreement. The treaty requires nations to hold the global average temperature increase to no more than 2° Celsius above 1850 to 1900 levels, or preferably to a 1.5° limit above the pre-industrial era.
UNEP's Executive Director Inger Andersen attributed the trend to people getting fed up with extreme weather and heat waves while nations' climate policies lag far behind what's needed to keep global average temperature rise below 1.5°.
“People are increasingly turning to courts to combat the climate crisis, holding governments and the private sector accountable and making litigation a key mechanism for securing climate action and promoting climate justice," she said.
The U.S. accounted for 70% of the cases filed in 65 jurisdictions worldwide. Among the remaining 30%, Australia, the U.K. and the European Union had the most cases. Next came Germany, Canada, Brazil, New Zealand and France.
About 17% of the cases were reported in developing countries, including small island nations vulnerable to sea level rise. The report cited 34 cases brought on behalf of young people, including girls under the age of 10 in Pakistan and India.
A 'distressingly growing gap'
The report finds most of the climate litigation falls into one or more of six categories:
- Cases relying on human rights enshrined in international law and national constitutions
- Challenges to domestic non-enforcement of climate-related laws and policies
- Litigants seeking to keep fossil fuels in the ground
- Advocates for greater climate disclosures and an end to greenwashing
- Claims addressing corporate liability and responsibility for climate harms
- Claims addressing failures to adapt to the impacts of climate change.
Among the legal forums used to seek climate action were regional, national and international courts, tribunals, quasi-judicial bodies, and other adjudicatory bodies, including special procedures of the U.N. and arbitration tribunals.
In March, for example, the European Court of Human Rights heard the first two of three cases challenging nations to do more to curb their greenhouse gas emissions.
The first case involves a group of more than 2,000 older Swiss women who complained that government inaction on climate protection worsened their health problems during heat waves.
The second case was brought by a former mayor of Grande-Synthe who argued the French government failed to do what was needed to reverse the rise in French-produced greenhouse gases and ensure the country adapts to climate change.
On the same day that the two cases were heard, the U.N. General Assembly agreed to ask the International Court of Justice at The Hague for an unprecedented legal opinion on the consequences of climate inaction.
Michael Gerrard, the Sabin Center’s faculty director, said the report shows the consequences of "a distressingly growing gap" between the level of greenhouse gas reductions the world needs to achieve in order to meet its temperature targets and the actions that governments are taking to lower emissions.
"This inevitably will lead more people to resort to the courts," he predicted.
Among the key cases cited in the report:
- The U.N. Human Rights Committee concluded for the first time that a country violated international human rights law through climate inaction when it found Australia’s government breached its obligations to Torres Strait Islanders.
- Brazil’s Supreme Court held that the Paris Agreement is a human rights treaty with “supranational” status.
- A Dutch court ordered British oil giant Royal Dutch Shell to cut carbon emissions nearly in half this decade, marking the first time a court found a private company has obligations under the Paris treaty.
- German justices struck down parts of the Federal Climate Protection Act as incompatible with the rights to life and health.
- A court in Paris held that France’s climate inaction and failure to meet its carbon budget goals caused climate-related ecological damages.
- A U.K. court found the government's net zero strategy failed to comply with its legal duties under its 2008 Climate Change Act.
