The challenges and promises of climate lawsuits
The HinduLawsuits against emissions-spewing governments and fossil fuel companies have established themselves as a key tool in the battle against climate change, but they aren't always successful Even the temperate, mountainous country of Switzerland isn't immune to climate change. "One of the reasons it's so important to look closely at these cases and the impact they're having is because their impact is likely to only grow in the years to come, as people increasingly see litigation as an important way to address the problems of climate change," says Hari Osofsky, a human rights law expert now at Northwestern University's Pritzker School of Law, who in 2020 coauthored an overview of climate change litigation in the Annual Review of Law and Social Science. Climate change as a human rights problem Taking governments to court over climate change was once considered a long shot, says César Rodríguez-Garavito, an international human rights and environmental law expert who heads New York University's Climate Litigation Accelerator, which studies and advocates for climate litigation, and edited the 2022 book Litigating the Climate Emergency. Like the Urgenda case, the German lawsuit invoked human rights — fundamentally arguing that the worsening hazards driven by climate change threaten the very rights to life and dignity, particularly for future generations. "I think that's actually been one of the main reasons that we haven't seen the same sorts of major victories when it comes to strategic climate litigation that we have seen in some other countries, particularly in Europe," says Jessica Wentz, a climate law expert at Columbia Law School's Sabin Center for Climate Change Law.