A report released in late June by the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) highlights the increasing trend of climate litigation against companies.
The report, titled “Global Trends in Climate Change Litigation: 2024 Snapshot,” reveals that approximately 230 climate-related lawsuits have been filed against corporations and trade associations since 2015, with over two-thirds of these cases initiated since 2020. The authors categorize these lawsuits as strategic litigation aimed at furthering broader climate action goals.
This report comes almost a year after the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) published findings stating how climate-related court cases had more than doubled between 2017 and 2022, from 884 to 2,180.
In July last year, Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UNEP, said: “Climate policies are far behind what is needed to keep global temperatures below the 1.5°C threshold, with extreme weather events and searing heat already baking our planet. 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.”
Traditionally, most climate cases targeted local, regional, or national governing bodies, and this pattern persisted in 2023. However, a noticeable difference emerged between cases filed in the United States and those filed elsewhere.
In the U.S., only 15% of climate cases were against companies, whereas outside the U.S., about 40% involved corporate defendants. The United States continues to be the country where the most climate-orientated litigation suits are filed.
The report also notes a surge in “climate-washing” lawsuits, with 47 new cases filed in 2023 against both companies and governments. These lawsuits address misleading communications regarding climate efforts. To date, more than 140 climate-washing cases have been filed, making it a rapidly growing area of litigation. Over half of the nearly 140 climate-washing cases reviewed from 2016 to 2023 concluded with decisions favoring the claimants.
In 2023, over 30 cases globally sought to hold companies accountable for climate-related damages due to their greenhouse gas emissions. Additionally, six “turning off the taps” cases, challenging the financing of projects misaligned with climate goals, were identified, bringing the total to 33 since 2015.
The report’s analysis draws from a dataset of 2,666 climate litigation cases, compiled by the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School. About 70% of these cases have been filed since the 2015 Paris Agreement, with 233 cases filed in 2023 alone.
“There is 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 actually taking to lower emissions,” said Michael Gerrard, Sabin Center’s Faculty Director. “This inevitably will lead more people to resort to the courts. This report will be an invaluable resource for everyone who wants to achieve the best possible outcome in judicial forums, and to understand what is and is not possible there.”
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The report also highlights the nearly 50 cases filed in 2023 that are not aligned with climate objectives. These include backlash litigation against environmental, social, and governance (ESG) policies and strategic litigation against public participation (SLAPP) suits aimed at deterring NGOs and shareholder activists from pursuing climate agendas.
Additionally, “just transition” cases challenge the distributional impacts of climate policy, and “green v. green” cases address potential trade-offs between climate and biodiversity or other environmental goals.
Climate litigation has spread to new regions, with cases filed for the first time in Panama and Portugal, increasing the total number of countries with recorded climate cases to 55. The report also notes the rising number of climate cases in the developing world, with the Global South now comprising around 8% of all cases with over 200 recorded.
In 2023, significant developments in international climate litigation occurred, with major international courts and tribunals being asked to rule on climate issues. Although only 5% of climate cases are before international courts, many have the potential to influence domestic proceedings. Notably, the UK Supreme Court recently ruled that a local council should have considered the full climate impact of burning oil from new wells.
The U.S. had the highest number of climate litigation cases filed in 2023, with 129 cases, with the next highest number being 24 cases, filed in the UK. Third was Brazil, with 10, followed by Germany and Australia with seven and six cases filed respectively. The U.S. remains the country with the most documented climate cases, totaling 1,745. Australia follows with 132 cases.
As highlighted by last year’s UNEP report, some of the key litigation cases on the issue of climate change over the past year include:
- The UN Human Rights Committee concluding for the first time that a country has violated international human rights law through climate policy and climate inaction, finding Australia’s government is in violation of its human rights obligations to Torres Strait Islanders;
- Brazil’s Supreme Court affirming that the 2015 Paris Agreement is a human rights treaty, which enjoys “supranational” status;
- a Dutch court ordered Shell, one of the world’s largest oil and gas companies, to comply with the Paris Agreement and reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by 45 per cent from 2019 levels by 2030. This was the first time a court found a private company to have a duty under the Paris Agreement;
- Germany’s court deeming parts of the Federal Climate Protection Act as incompatible with the rights to life and health;
- a court in Paris holding that France’s climate inaction and failure to meet its carbon budget goals have caused climate-related ecological damages;
- a United Kingdom court finding that the government had failed to comply with its legal duties under its Climate Change Act 2008 when approving its net-zero strategy;
The LSE report concludes by stating that the impact of climate litigation on advancing or hindering climate action is still unclear. While some cases, such as government framework cases, have had lasting impacts on domestic climate governance, the long-term implications of other types, like climate-washing cases, remain uncertain despite their relatively high success rates in court.
Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed here by Impakter.com columnists are their own, not those of Impakter.com — Cover Photo Credit: Chris LeBoutillier.
