Climate litigation
Also called: Climate change litigation · Topic: Judiciary: Independence, Structure, Judicial Review and Activism · NCERT: Beyond NCERT
Meaning
Climate litigation means court cases about harm caused by climate change. People exposed to climate risks sue states or private companies. They say these parties failed to cut greenhouse gas emissions (gases that trap heat and warm the planet). Such cases have been filed in many courts in Europe and the U.S. over the last two decades. Plaintiffs (the people who sue) usually say their life, health, property, privacy or family life is at serious risk. These cases do not always win. The main difficulty is causation, which means proving that this defendant's emissions harmed this person "in a sufficiently direct and proximate way". "Proximate" means close enough in the chain of events for the law to hold someone responsible.
Example
Think of a flood in a South Asian country, like Pakistan's floods of 2022. Victims could sue a big emitter in another country. The court would still ask them to show how that one emitter's gases led to the loss of their own home. In India, a similar claim would most likely come as a PIL (public interest litigation, a case filed for a public cause) under Art. 32 or Art. 226, based on the right to life in Art. 21.
Don't confuse with
- Environmental PIL (the M.C. Mehta cases): these are about local pollution, such as a gas leak or a dirty river, where the polluter is close by and easy to link to the harm. Climate harm comes from many distant sources, so it is much harder to prove who caused it.
- Loss and damage: this is money for climate harm that countries agree on in climate talks. It is not won by suing in court.