The Status of Global Climate Change Legal Action: a New Report
by
Jennifer Danis and Romany Webb
|January 27, 2021
Countries around the world are increasingly setting national emissions reductions targets and articulating policy objectives to address climate change impacts. As they do, a broad set of actors are turning to courts to seek enforcement of existing climate laws, to articulate clearer definitions of climate rights, to ask for compensation for a variety of climate harms and, on the other side of things, to demand relief from policies seen as overly ambitious. Today, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), with support from Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, has published a survey of global climate change litigation that provides an overview of existing cases and a discussion of their key legal issues: Global Climate Litigation Report: 2020 Status Review.