Trend Climate litigation to enforce policy

Summary

The report sees parties turning to the courts more and more often to force climate policy. Litigation no longer only demands that states meet the targets agreed in climate accords but also challenges the level of climate ambition itself. Internationally, in 2023 a group of older Swiss women took their country to the European Court of Human Rights for failing to protect citizens adequately against heatwaves, and the court ruled that Switzerland must strengthen its climate policy. In the Netherlands, the court in the Urgenda case ordered the state in 2019 to take climate action on human rights grounds, and in 2021 Shell became the first private company to receive such an order on the basis of its duty of care. The report considers that these successes for claimants lend momentum to the legal route.