Climate Law

On 21 March 2024 the Chief Justice of India, Dr Dhanajaya Y Chandrachud and India’s Supreme Court handed down a truly historic judgement in a climate case, M.K. Ranjitsinh & Others v Union of India (2024 INSC 280).

The UK has announced it will leave the controversial Energy Charter Treaty. We explain what it is and why it matters.

In this blog we pick out three decarbonisation trends, one good, one bad, one interesting, from researcher Nat Bullard’s annual presentation.

As COP28 wrapped up in Dubai, and 2024 begins, we take a look at the year ahead. What will 2024 bring, and what should we focus on to help fight climate change?

In this very significant case, which has now gone to trial, and is being closely followed especially in U.S. legal circles, 16 young people from the U.S. State of Montana are bringing a legal challenge against their State government, saying that it is failing to deliver the promise in the State’s constitution for a right to a clean and healthy environment. It is one of the first real tests in a court of law of the constitutional right to a clean and healthy environment and will test the extent measurable impacts of climate change can be legally attributed to individual states.

On 29 March 2023 the United Nations General Assembly voted by acclamation to support the motion brought by the Republic of Vanuatu and by Pacific Island law students, with the support of more than 100 countries. This sought a referral to the International Court of Justice for an advisory opinion of two questions seeking clarification of states’ responsibilities under international law to address climate change effectively.

In a judgement published by the High Court on the 18th July 2022, Friends of the Earth, ClientEarth, the Good Law Project and individual litigant Joanna Wheatley, succeeded in winning their legal challenge that stated the UK government’s Net Zero Strategy did not meet the requirements of the Climate Change Act 2008.

On 28 July 2022, by 161 votes to 0, with 8 abstentions, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution (UNGA 76/300) recognising the right to a clean, healthy, sustainable environment as a human right.

On 30 June 2022, the conservative majority in the U.S. Supreme Court drastically curtailed the ability and powers of the Federal Environmental Protection Agency ‘E.P.A.’ to regulate the greenhouse gas emissions of power plants under the Clean Air Act. In this blog we analyse the ruling, its impact and what it may mean for attempts to fight climate change.

On 21 March 2022, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (S.E.C.) proposed rule changes which would require registered financial firms to make climate-related disclosures in their registration statements and periodic reports.

In this blog we take a look at the climate case: Duarte Agostinho and Others v. Portugal and 32 Other States. Where 6 young Portuguese claimants filed a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights against 33 countries.

ClientEarth has announced that it has launched a legal challenge against the Board and individual directors of Shell, with potential important implications for future legal interpretation of directors’ “fiduciary duties” when it comes to the climate.

One of several highlights for us at COP26 was being able to share screenings of the short film ‘USING THE LAW TO FIX CLIMATE CHANGE’, in which four young filmmakers interview four youth climate activists.

COP26andBeyond, in partnership with IARI, will be hosting 3 events at the #All4Climate Italy 2021 summit. Find out more and sign up here.

In this guest blog, Giulia Paniccia from Istituto Analisi Relazioni Internationali ‘IARI’ considers the different levels of environmental laws and their implementation in Italy, and draws some conclusions of wider application to the effective enforcement of laws generally

Recent legal rulings in both France and Germany have held that the governments of both countries are not doing enough to fight climate change. They have both led to immediate political responses and show how future litigation might be successful elsewhere.

As part of our series on ‘Using the Law to Fix the Climate’, we got in touch with Tom Webster Arbizu in Australia, a climate activist and one of the plaintiffs in the legal challenge: Sharma and others v Minister for the Environment. We put some questions to Tom and his lawyers about the case.

In this blog we argue that net-zero, the energy transition and addressing climate change are all essential and pressing issues, but that the enormous ‘gold rush’ for metals and minerals to support new ‘energy transition technologies carries major risks unless the need for ethical supply chains is addressed promptly.

COP26andbeyond are proud to present this MOCK COP fringe event in which we will look at how laws are made, how they are enforced, and what you can do to use them to fix the climate.

Guest Author Professor Dan Farber demonstrates how even minor changes in four key statutes could make an outsize difference to the direction of regulation in key areas of legislation in America relevant to climate change, and its security from legal challenge.

In this article we argue that ‘clean’ energy must not be bought at the expense of the safety of adult or child labour in mines, or the destruction of the environment through seabed mining.

In a climate case of potentially huge implications for the coal, oil and gas industries, a farmer and mountain guide from the Peruvian Andes is bringing a case in the German courts against the major German power generator RWE.

William Wilson’s report on Environmental Institutions has been published by the Westminster Foundation for Democracy.

A summary of the recent Irish Supreme Court Case: Friends of the Irish Environment v The Government of Ireland