Climate litigation, taking stock of an increasingly complex trend of legal actions

Abstract

[eng] The steady increase in greenhouse gas emissions and their concentration in the atmosphere, especially over the last forty years, contrasts with the insufficient actions taken at both the domestic and international level since the adoption of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992. The appalling level of climate action as compared to what is needed has driven organizations and individuals across the world to devise legal strategies that focus on courts as an appropriate forum to determine the adequacy of States’ responses to climate change. Nevertheless, climate litigation is a diverse phenomenon, and alongside pro-climate citizen-led strategic litigation we also find other instances with different plaintiffs and defendants, some of them even directed at preventing the implementation of measures directed at reducing GHG emissions. The aim of this article is to provide an overview of climate litigation, especially since 2015, with a particular focus on the most recent trends of that constantly evolving field.