Climate Litigation | Inside The Issues 6.11

David Estrin of CIGI, a senior research fellow with the International Law Research Program. At CIGI, he is involved with developing and leading examinations of the effectiveness of international environmental law regimes, including the following areas: governance and regulation of the extractive and energy sector, including rapidly evolving international law expectations for effective environmental standards and related corporate conduct, particularly considering how non-responsiveness to these expectations may impact on human rights; assessing international, transnational, and local law-based and market-based approaches to reversing climate change and its impacts (case studies);  and international environmental law related trade and investment and intellectual property issues. CIGI PAPER Worth a read Limiting Dangerous Climate Change: The Critical Role of Citizen Suits and Domestic Courts—Despite the Paris Agreement This paper focuses on the emerging new role of citizen suits, domestic courts and human rights commissions in limiting dangerous climate change. Given the failure of states to stop the almost constant increase in global carbon emissions (and now the worrying practical and legal gaps in the 2015 Paris Agreement), frustrated citizens are increasingly looking to domestic courts to require governments to mitigate emissions and limit climate harm. This emerging role is demonstrated in three important 2015 decisions: Urgenda from the Netherlands; Leghari from Pakistan; and Foster v Washington Department of Ecology from the United States. These suits before domestic courts have achieved significant results in the battle against climate change. Each court found there was a legal duty on the respondent government to rein in carbon emissions or take other measures to prevent significant climate-related human and civil rights impacts. Also in 2015, the Philippines Human Rights Commission agreed to investigate and hold hearings as to the responsibility of large international fossil fuel companies for substantial impairment of human rights in the Philippines caused by extreme weather events.