dc.description | This report, which updates the 2017 document by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) entitled The Status of Climate Change Litigation: A Global Review, provides an overview of the current state of climate change litigation, as well as a fresh assessment of global climate change litigation trends. It finds that a rapid increase in climate litigation has occurred around the world. The report also describes five types of climate cases that suggest where global climate change litigation may be heading in the coming years. First, plaintiffs are increasingly filing consumer and investor fraud claims alleging that companies failed to disclose information about climate risk or have disclosed information in a misleading way. Second, recent years suggest a growing number of pre- and postdisaster
cases premised on a defendant’s failure to properly plan for or manage the consequences of extreme weather events. Third, as more cases are filed and some reach a conclusion, implementation of courts’ orders will raise new challenges. Fourth, courts and litigants increasingly will be called on to address the law and science of climate attribution as cases seeking to assign responsibility for private actors’ contributions to climate change and cases arguing for greater government action to mitigate both advance and proliferate. Finally, litigants are increasingly bringing claims before international adjudicatory bodies, which may lack for enforcement authority but whose declarations can shift and inform judicial understanding. | en_US |