Climate Litigation – The New Hope for Climate Action?
In view of rising global emissions and stalling climate action, NGOs, lawyers, and affected people have turned to the law to achieve accountability and climate progress. Court rulings are legally binding and allow marginalised people to find justice. But what is climate litigation exactly, and how has it been applied? Is it effective, and what challenges does it come with?
About strategic climate litigation
The Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University defines strategic climate litigation as “cases brought before a judicial or quasi-judicial body in which climate change law, policy, or science forms a material issue of law or fact.” Climate litigation is on the rise, both in terms of the number of countries in which it has been applied and the number of cases. Up until now, the Climate Litigation Database lists more than 3000 cases worldwide. Most cases are brought forward by NGOs and individuals. Actors are using a diverse set of tactics, seeking for instance the enforcement of existing climate laws, the integration of climate considerations into laws, orders to the public and private sector to take more ambitious climate action, respect for human rights undermined by climate change, and compensation for climate harms.
Recent developments
Recently, climate litigation has benefited from the progress made in attribution science, which allows scientists to quantify the extent to which human-driven climate change has increased the likelihood or severity of specific extreme events. Environmental movements are increasingly focusing on holding governments and corporations accountable across borders.
One major success was the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) advisory opinion. It confirmed the 1.5°C target of the Paris Agreement as legally binding and, even more importantly, requires states to “take appropriate measures to prevent foreseeable harm.” It allows affected states to seek reparations and creates legal risks for new fossil fuel production sites. While the advisory opinion is not legally binding, it paves the way for future climate litigation.
Another trend is the increasing application of the “polluter pays” principle. More than 80 such cases seeking to hold individuals or corporations directly responsible for their local impacts, even across borders, were filed between 2015 and 2024.
An influential case was “Luciano Lliuya v. RWE AG”. A Peruvian farmer and mountain guide sought to hold RWE, Germany’s largest electricity producer, accountable for knowingly contributing to climate change, after he noticed that the melting of a glacier threatened his town. Stretched over ten years, the case was ultimately not decided in his favour. Lliuya’s claims were dismissed because the court could not establish a clear causal link between RWE’s fossil fuel production and the potential impacts in Peru. Nevertheless, the landmark ruling was a success, as for the first time in history a court established that major greenhouse emitters could in principle be held accountable for the impacts of their emissions under German civil law. Furthermore, a causal link can be established despite a large geographical distance between the emission source and the location of the impact. Therefore, the case might have opened the door for similar legal interventions.
Rights-based litigation
Another trend in strategic climate litigation is so-called rights-based litigation, which encompasses lawsuits against human rights violations and violations of the rights of nature.
Claims based on human rights argue that fundamental rights have been undermined through, for instance, pollution or inadequate climate action. The campaign “See You in Court” focuses on cases that use the right to a healthy environment as the basis for legal action against polluting corporations. An interesting approach was taken by the NGO Friends of the Earth: arguing that the UK’s inadequate National Adaptation Plan (NAP3) violated fundamental human rights, they took the matter all the way to the European Court of Human Rights in July 2025. Even the government’s own Climate Change Committee (CCC) deemed NAP3 “far short of what is needed” (see here for further information on the UK’s climate policies). The court is now deciding whether to hear the case. If it does, it would be the first time a government’s adaptation plan is challenged in court, and the ruling could set an important precedent.
In a similar vein, cases are built on the claim that ecosystems have inherent rights that have been breached. So far, the idea of prescribing “personhood” status to parts of the environment, such as rivers or lakes, often remains in the realm of legal theory, as courts rarely follow this line of argument. A well-known example of practical implementation, however, is Ecuador, which enshrined the inherent rights of nature in its constitution in 2008 – as the first country worldwide. This constitutional provision is what saved the natural habitat of the longnose harlequin frog and the confusing rocket frog: when a large, government-funded mining project was planned in the Andean cloud forest, the re-discovery of the two endangered frog species came at the right time. The court decided that the rights of nature, in this case the rights of the frog species, had to be protected, bringing the mining project to an end.
Climate litigation in the Global South
This rights-based approach has been applied particularly in countries in global-majority regions. While most cases of climate litigation have been filed in the US, followed by Australia, the UK, and Brazil, more and more global-majority countries are using climate litigation as a tool to enforce climate action. Almost 10% of cases were filed in Global South countries in 2025. Interestingly, researchers found that litigants from the Global South are more likely to file cases which require governments to implement existing environmental policies rather than trying to achieve more ambitious regulatory action. The reason might be that countries are facing capacity constraints and are usually not accountable for large amounts of greenhouse gas emissions.
At the same time, there have been a number of innovative legal strategies used in Global South countries, such as child-led climate litigation in India. Empowering marginalised groups to participate in climate litigation can be a powerful act of climate justice. Challenges are structural barriers and a lack of resources and capacities, for instance to produce scientific knowledge to prove environmental wrongdoing, as well as time and money. Moreover, climate migrants often lack formal legal protection. In sum, climate litigation in the Global South can differ in its objectives and strategies and is faced with challenges, but it can serve as an effective tool for moving closer to climate justice.
An effective tool?
So does climate litigation live up to the expectations as a new tool for enforcing climate action? The numbers indicate that it has been effective: in 2025, almost 50% of 250 cases resulted in enhanced climate action, while 40% had a negative effect, and just over 10% had a neutral effect. One leverage point is that climate litigation presents a financial risk to corporations, as companies experience a 0.41% fall in stock returns following an unfavourable court decision.
For example, the German Federal Constitutional court’s decision that the Climate Change Act was partly unconstitutional because it violated the fundamental rights of future generations resulted in an amendment to the law.
Moreover, the new strategy of rights-based claims can contribute to a new understanding of our relationship to nature. But as the experiences from Global South countries show, structural and financial conditions must be in place to ensure access to litigation. And especially large polluting corporations have also started to use courtrooms to push back against activists and NGOs. By using so-called SLAPPs (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation), fossil fuel producers in particular are trying to intimidate and deter environmentalists from taking action. For instance, Energy Transfer won a court case against Greenpeace International and Greenpeace US in North Dakota, forcing them to pay more than USD 660 million in March 2025.
Cases to follow:
Two cases are currently (February 2026) ongoing and are worth keeping an eye on to see how climate litigation evolves and what strategies litigants follow:
Belgian farmer suing TotalEnergies
The Belgian farmer Hugues experiences the impacts of the climate crisis firsthand through increasing drought, resulting in loss of yields. Therefore, he, supported by three NGOs, sued fossil fuel producer TotalEnergies over its responsibility for climate change. He demands that TotalEnergies immediately cease all investment in new fossil fuel projects. It is the first time that a citizen has taken a multinational to court in Belgium over a climate dispute. The verdict is expected in the spring of 2026. For more information, see the website here: https://www.thefarmercase.be/en/the-court-case/
Greenpeace and citizens from Dutch island Bonaire vs The Netherlands
Colonial legacies and entrenched injustices are still present, as this case shows. The plaintiffs, Greenpeace Netherlands, together with eight citizens of the Dutch island of Bonaire in the Caribbean, argue that while billions are spent on adaptation measures for the European Netherlands (think of massive dams), citizens of Bonaire are seeing no similar efforts. In fact, until the case was filed in 2024, there had not even been research done on the effects of climate change on the island and its citizens.
The Netherlands has a historic responsibility to act due to its colonial history in the Caribbean and its high relative emissions. Therefore, the plaintiffs are demanding that the European Netherlands cut its emissions earlier than planned and develop a credible adaptation plan for Bonaire. The verdict is expected at the end of January 2026.
By Merle Clara Riebandt