This section of the Guide concerns legal claims against big corporations who have significantly contributed and continue to contribute to climate change. These claims often ask for corporations to contribute to the cost of responding to climate impacts, compensation for damage, or for court orders to change or restrict their actions. These companies can be […]
Content type: Legal Areas
Legal Topic: Climate change,
The biggest cause of climate change is excessive GHG emissions created by the combustion of fossil fuels (oil, coal and gas). As a result, the following types of carbon-emitting projects are big contributors to climate change: Oil exploration and drilling: The process of drilling is carbon intensive. More importantly, the oil and natural gas that’s […]
Content type: Legal Areas
Legal Topic: Climate change,
This section concerns what can be called “Adaptation Claims”. They are called adaptation claims because they involve bringing governments to court to demand that they take adequate adaptation measures. Adaptation concerns minimizing or avoiding the impacts of climate change (e.g. flooding due to sea level rises) by adapting to changing conditions. These cases seek to […]
Content type: Legal Areas
Legal Topic: Climate change,
This section concerns what can be called “Mitigation Claims”. They are called mitigation claims because they involve bringing governments to court to demand that they take better mitigation measures. They seek to force governments to take bolder action to reduce emissions or to support non-GHG emitting alternatives, such as renewable energy. Mitigation claims are typically […]
Content type: Legal Areas
Legal Topic: Climate change,
So far, we have introduced you to the causes and impacts of climate change, as well as what needs to be done to prevent dangerous climate change. The Guide will now take you through what legal options may be available to combat climate change and some of the basics to get you started if you […]
Content type: Legal Areas
Legal Topic: Climate change,
State-sanctioned felling is ‘based on a monumental lie’, former Greens leader says. The former Greens leader Bob Brown has launched a legal challenge to native forest logging in Tasmania, claiming it is inconsistent with federal environment law. The case by the Bob Brown Foundation, lodged in the federal court on Thursday, challenges what has been seen as […]
Content type: News
Legal Topic: Environment,
Civil society rejoiced when the Tanzania-based African Court of Human and Peoples’ Rights was established in 1998. But the dream for justice within the continent risks falling apart as member states neglect the court. Within six months, three African nations – Tanzania, Benin, Ivory Coast – have revoked the right of individuals and NGOs to sue them […]
Content type: News
Legal Topic: Climate change,
In a precedent-setting move, the Constitutional Court of Ecuador has announced it will take on the case of the threatened Los Cedros Protected Forest by using the Rights of Nature enshrined in the constitution. The Constitutional Court chose to hear this case recently and apply, for the first time, Ecuador’s constitutionally mandated Rights of Nature […]
Content type: News
Legal Topic: Climate change, Environment,
A group of activists from Wayuu, an Indigenous people of northern Colombia and Venezuela, have called upon the United Nations to intervene in their struggle against the owners of one of the biggest coal mines in the world. The mine, called Cerrejón, is located on the Guajira Peninsula near the Venezuelan border, right in the […]
Content type: News
Legal Topic: Environment,
Katta O’Donnell, 23, says her claim will put government ‘on trial for misconduct’ for failing to address climate change. A Melbourne university student has launched what has been described as a world-first legal case against the Australian government, accusing it of misleading investors in sovereign bonds by failing to disclose the financial risk caused by the […]
Content type: News
Legal Topic: Climate change,
