Climate Litigation Has Doubled In 7 Years

Activists are increasingly taking legal action in the fight against climate change.

Photo Insert: At COP27 in November, UN experts called out the “empty slogans and hype” of many corporate environmental claims.

Climate change litigation has more than doubled globally in the past seven years, according to the London School of Economics, Euronews Green reported.

Greenwashing - in which a company touts its operations as more environmentally sustainable than they are -took the spotlight in 2022. In October, Australia's corporate watchdog fined Tlou Energy for making “factually incorrect” statements about its environmental credentials.

At COP27 in November, UN experts called out the “empty slogans and hype” of many corporate environmental claims.

Loss and damage also gained traction at COP27, with developing countries most affected by climate change demanding compensation from richer countries, which are disproportionately responsible for high emissions.

This has emboldened campaigners to launch more legal cases against climate-action laggards.

In 2021, a landmark case against Shell saw the Big Oil giant ordered to slash CO2 emissions by 45%. This paved the way for further litigation, like the ongoing efforts in the US to bring Shell, BP, and Exxon to trial over their climate tactics and greenwashing.

Climate activists are leveraging legal actions on all fronts, aiming to hold both governments and corporations to account - and traditionally polluting industries such as fossil fuel production are no longer the only target.

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