Continuing the increasing trend in climate litigation in recent years, 233 new petitions were filed globally in the year 2023 calling upon courts to adjudicate matters related to climate change or to rely on climate change arguments to decide on issues of public importance, a new annual report has found.
A majority of these cases, 129 of the 233, were filed in the US jurisdictions, the report by the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and Environment at the London School of Economics said. The Grantham report uses a climate litigation database maintained by the Sabin Centre for Climate Change Law at the Columbia Law School in the United States to track climate cases being filed across the world.
This year’s report, the sixth edition of ‘Global Trends in climate change litigation’, makes a special mention of the Indian Supreme Court’s order in April that expanded the fundamental rights to life and to equality to include the right to be free from adverse effects of climate change. The report said this particular judgment represented a “good example” of a growing number of cases in which one set of environmental concerns were pitted against another.
The Indian Supreme Court order had come on a petition that sought dismantling of overhead power transmission lines, wind turbines and solar panels in and around critical habitats of the Great Indian Bustard, an endangered species of bird. The government had argued that these projects were necessary from the climate change and energy security perspective. The Supreme Court had largely upheld the objections of the government, weighing the need of conservation of the endangered bird against the climate change imperatives of the country, while issuing a series of directions to take alternative measures to protect the bird.
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This particular case apart, there were few climate related petitions in India, in keeping with the very low numbers in developing countries in general.
The Sabin Centre database has records of 2,666 climate change cases across the world, of which 1,745, more than 65 per cent, were filed in the United States. The United Kingdom, the country with the second highest number of cases, had just 24. Among the developing countries, Brazil, with 10 cases, had the maximum number of climate litigation cases.
“While research indicates a growing trend in utilising the courts as instruments in climate policy responses in some Global South countries, there may be a strategic avoidance of climate litigation in others. For instance, India’s historically low number of climate cases has reflected a conscious decision to avoid an overly narrow focus on emissions, as this can overlook broader issues related to livelihoods, rights and ecological concerns,” the report said.
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More than 70 per cent of the 2,666 cases so far had been filed after 2015, the report said, pointing to the fact that the trend was fairly recent. The rise in cases year on year had slowed down a bit, but it was expected to gather momentum once the important cases with far-reaching implications get decided.
The report noted that while most of the petitioners happened to be NGOs or individuals, governments were also filing cases on climate change related matters, particularly in the United States where 20 per cent of the new cases filed in 2023 were initiated by government agencies.
“These are often subnational governments challenging federal climate policy decisions, and subnational governments filing suits against oil and gas companies. Different actors have turned to the courts elsewhere too, such as political parties and public prosecutors in Brazil,” the report said.
It also noted the growing trend of using human rights in climate cases and cited the recent rulings of the European Court of Human Rights in this regard, including the one that had held that Switzerland had failed to meet its greenhouse gas emission reduction targets. This particular ruling had also affirmed that climate change posed a direct and substantial threat to human rights and called upon countries to take effective climate action.
“By setting a precedent for courts worldwide in interpreting the human rights obligations of states regarding climate action, the (European Court’s) decision could inform the advisory opinions regarding states’ legal obligations in the context of climate change, thereby highlighting the interconnectedness of human rights and environmental protection on a global scale,” the report said.