Climate litigation & legal action: what it is, why it matters, and how to evaluate the landscape

Why It Matters

In the past five years, climate litigation has grown from a relatively obscure legal niche into one of the most powerful tools available for driving emissions reductions and corporate accountability. The global count of climate-related cases now exceeds 2,900 across more than 60 countries, with approximately 70% of those filings originating after 2015 (Grantham Research Institute, 2025). Courts are no longer simply adjudicating environmental disputes; they are establishing binding precedents that compel governments to strengthen climate targets and require corporations to align business strategies with the Paris Agreement. For sustainability professionals, legal teams, and investors, understanding this landscape is no longer optional. Climate litigation creates material financial risks through potential damages awards, forces operational changes through injunctions, and shapes the regulatory environment through precedent-setting rulings. The European Court of Human Rights' landmark KlimaSeniorinnen v. Switzerland decision in 2024 demonstrated that a single ruling can establish legally enforceable climate obligations across 46 nations simultaneously (ECHR, 2024). Whether your organization is a potential defendant, an investor assessing portfolio risk, or a policymaker designing compliance frameworks, evaluating the climate litigation landscape is now a core competency.

Key Concepts

What climate litigation encompasses. Climate litigation refers to legal proceedings in which climate change is a central issue, whether as the primary subject matter or a significant factual consideration. This includes cases brought by governments, NGOs, individuals, and increasingly by shareholders against their own companies. Cases may be filed in national courts, international tribunals, quasi-judicial bodies, or complaint mechanisms under consumer protection and advertising law.

Main legal theories. Climate cases generally rely on one or more of the following legal strategies. Constitutional and human rights claims argue that governments have a duty to protect citizens from the harms of climate change, including threats to life, health, property, and cultural identity. These cases have been particularly successful in Europe and Latin America. Tort and negligence claims seek to hold fossil fuel companies and other major emitters liable for damages caused by their contributions to climate change, drawing on attribution science to establish causation. Regulatory enforcement actions challenge governments for failing to implement or enforce existing environmental and climate legislation. Corporate disclosure and greenwashing claims target companies making misleading sustainability claims, with case volumes growing 150% between 2022 and 2025 (ClientEarth, 2025). Fiduciary duty claims argue that company directors or fund managers who ignore climate risk are breaching their obligations to shareholders or beneficiaries.

Attribution science. A critical enabler of modern climate litigation is attribution science, which uses physical modeling and statistical analysis to quantify the link between greenhouse gas emissions and specific climate impacts. The World Weather Attribution initiative has produced rapid attribution analyses for hundreds of extreme weather events, and courts in Germany, the Netherlands, Australia, and the Philippines have admitted this evidence (World Weather Attribution, 2025). A 2025 study published in Nature Climate Change found that attribution science has been cited in court proceedings in at least 30 cases since 2021, strengthening plaintiffs' ability to demonstrate causation (Stuart-Smith et al., 2025).

Jurisdictional landscape. The United States hosts the largest share of cases at approximately 55% of the global total, but the center of gravity is shifting. The EU accounts for an increasing proportion of new filings, particularly in Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Belgium. Cases in the Global South have tripled since 2020, with Brazil, Colombia, India, South Korea, and Pakistan among the most active jurisdictions (Sabin Center, 2026). International tribunals are also becoming important venues. The International Court of Justice accepted a request from the UN General Assembly for an advisory opinion on state climate obligations, and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights issued its own advisory opinion in 2024, strengthening the legal foundation for cases across Latin America and the Caribbean.

The role of financial regulators. Financial regulators and securities commissions are increasingly adjacent to climate litigation. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's climate disclosure rules, finalized in 2024, create new legal exposure for companies that misstate or omit material climate risks in their filings. The EU's Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), which requires detailed climate disclosures from approximately 50,000 companies beginning in 2025, provides a regulatory baseline that plaintiffs can reference when challenging corporate climate claims (European Commission, 2025).

What's Working

Government accountability litigation continues to produce transformational outcomes. The Urgenda decision in the Netherlands, the Neubauer ruling in Germany, and the KlimaSeniorinnen decision at the ECHR have collectively established that governments bear legally enforceable obligations to protect their populations from climate change. These rulings have directly led to strengthened national emissions targets and accelerated policy timelines.

Corporate-facing cases are beginning to produce structural change. The Hague District Court's order requiring Shell to reduce its absolute emissions 45% by 2030 marked the first time a court imposed Paris-aligned emission reduction obligations on a private company (Milieudefensie, 2025). The case has influenced investor expectations, proxy voting patterns, and corporate transition planning across the oil and gas sector.

Greenwashing enforcement has become a credible deterrent. The Australian Federal Court's ruling against Santos in 2024 for describing gas as "clean energy" demonstrated that consumer protection frameworks can be applied to corporate climate claims. In Italy, the competition authority fined ENI for greenwashing its diesel marketing in 2024. These cases, combined with the incoming EU Green Claims Directive, are pushing companies toward more rigorous substantiation of environmental marketing.

Shareholder activism and litigation are converging. Shareholders at major emitters including BP, Equinor, and Toyota have filed resolutions demanding Paris-aligned business plans, and in several cases have pursued legal challenges when boards refused to act. This convergence of engagement and litigation creates compounding pressure on corporate boards (ShareAction, 2025).

What's Not Working

Enforcement gaps remain significant. Courts can declare government policies inadequate, but compelling specific legislative or budgetary responses is constitutionally difficult in many jurisdictions. Brazil's Supreme Federal Tribunal ordered the full disbursement of the Amazon Fund in 2024, but implementation has been delayed by bureaucratic and political obstacles (Climate Observatory Brazil, 2025). The gap between favorable rulings and real-world policy change is one of the most persistent challenges in climate litigation.

Procedural delays undermine urgency. In the United States, several major municipal lawsuits against oil companies have spent years in jurisdictional battles over whether cases should be heard in state or federal court. By the time cases reach substantive hearings, years have passed and the urgency of the climate crisis has only deepened.

Access to justice is uneven. Communities in the Global South, which face the most severe climate impacts, often lack the financial resources, legal infrastructure, and institutional support to bring and sustain climate litigation. Many cases in developing countries depend on funding and technical support from international NGOs, raising questions about long-term sustainability and local capacity building (UNEP, 2025).

Backlash is intensifying. Some governments and industry groups have responded to climate litigation with counter-strategies, including lobbying for legislation that restricts legal standing for environmental claims, filing strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs), and challenging the admissibility of attribution science. In the United States, some states have passed laws shielding fossil fuel companies from climate-related tort claims, creating a fragmented legal landscape.

Key Players

Established Leaders

• ClientEarth — Environmental law NGO operating across Europe, Asia, and Africa, involved in more than 80 climate and environmental cases.
• Earthjustice — The largest nonprofit environmental law firm in the United States, providing free legal representation in climate, clean energy, and pollution cases.
• Urgenda Foundation — Dutch organization responsible for the first successful climate case ordering a government to cut emissions.
• Sabin Center for Climate Change Law (Columbia University) — Maintains the most comprehensive global database of climate litigation cases and publishes annual trend analyses.

Emerging Startups

• Climate Rights International — Founded in 2024 by former Human Rights Watch leadership, applies human rights investigation methods to climate accountability.
• Vested Rights — Legal-tech platform providing litigation risk analytics to institutional investors and corporate boards assessing climate liability exposure.
• Lex Climatica — Open-access legal research platform aggregating climate case law and regulatory developments across jurisdictions for practitioners in the Global South.

Key Investors/Funders

• Children's Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF) — One of the largest funders of strategic climate litigation globally, committing over $50 million since 2020.
• ClimateWorks Foundation — Supports climate litigation capacity building programs in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia.
• European Climate Foundation — Funds legal organizations and research institutes pursuing systemic climate cases across Europe.

Examples

Milieudefensie v. Shell (Netherlands). In 2021, the Hague District Court ordered Shell to cut its global CO2 emissions by 45% by 2030 relative to 2019 levels, encompassing not only the company's direct operations but also the emissions from the use of its products (scope 3). The ruling was the first to impose Paris-aligned obligations on a private company and has become a reference point for similar cases targeting major emitters worldwide. Shell's appeal has progressed through the courts, but the case has already shifted investor expectations and corporate transition planning (Milieudefensie, 2025).

KlimaSeniorinnen v. Switzerland (ECHR). In April 2024, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Switzerland's failure to adopt adequate measures to meet its climate commitments violated the right to private and family life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The Grand Chamber judgment applies to all 46 Council of Europe member states, creating the broadest jurisdictional impact of any climate ruling to date. Legal scholars have described it as establishing an affirmative governmental duty to implement quantified, time-bound emissions reduction pathways (ECHR, 2024).

Held v. State of Montana (United States). Sixteen young plaintiffs successfully argued in August 2023 that Montana's policy of approving fossil fuel projects without evaluating their climate impacts violated the state constitution's guarantee of a clean and healthful environment. The ruling was the first successful constitutional climate trial in the United States. Montana has appealed, but the case has inspired similar youth-led constitutional challenges in Hawai'i, Virginia, and Utah (Our Children's Trust, 2025).

Santos Greenwashing Case (Australia). The Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility brought a case against Santos, one of Australia's largest gas producers, challenging the company's characterization of its operations as "clean energy" and its net-zero pathway as credible. The Australian Federal Court found in 2024 that Santos had engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct, establishing that corporate net-zero plans relying on unproven technologies like carbon capture and storage can be subject to consumer protection law scrutiny (ACCR, 2024).

Action Checklist

• Conduct a litigation risk audit. Map your organization's exposure to climate litigation by identifying public climate commitments, sustainability marketing claims, and regulatory disclosure obligations that could be challenged.
• Review and substantiate climate claims. Ensure all net-zero targets, carbon neutrality claims, and green product marketing are backed by verifiable data, credible methodologies, and transparent assumptions. Align with the EU Green Claims Directive requirements proactively.
• Integrate litigation risk into board governance. Include climate litigation exposure as a standing agenda item for board risk committees and ensure directors understand their potential fiduciary duty exposure.
• Monitor case law developments. Track rulings from the Sabin Center and Grantham Research Institute databases. Key jurisdictions to watch include the EU, UK, United States, Australia, and Brazil.
• Strengthen emissions data quality. Ensure scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions reporting is accurate and auditable, as courts and regulators increasingly scrutinize the data behind corporate climate commitments.
• Engage with attribution science. Understand how climate attribution research could affect your organization's liability exposure, particularly if your company operates in carbon-intensive sectors.
• Build legal and policy capacity. Retain climate law specialists and establish relationships with external counsel experienced in environmental litigation before disputes arise.

FAQ

What is climate litigation? Climate litigation encompasses all legal proceedings in which climate change is a central factual or legal issue. This includes lawsuits against governments for failing to meet emissions targets, tort claims against fossil fuel companies for contributing to climate harm, challenges to regulatory decisions, greenwashing cases under consumer protection law, and shareholder actions alleging breaches of fiduciary duty related to climate risk. The global case count now exceeds 2,900 across more than 60 countries.

Who can be sued in a climate case? Both governments and private companies face climate litigation. Governments are typically sued under constitutional, human rights, or administrative law theories for failing to adopt or implement adequate climate policies. Corporations face claims under tort law, consumer protection statutes, securities regulation, and fiduciary duty frameworks. In recent years, individual company directors have also faced personal liability claims for failing to address climate risk.

How do courts establish that a specific company caused climate harm? Courts increasingly rely on climate attribution science, which uses physical modeling and statistical analysis to quantify how specific emissions sources contribute to climate change impacts. Research from the Carbon Majors project, which traces 72% of global industrial greenhouse gas emissions to just 100 companies, provides a foundation for establishing the proportional responsibility of individual emitters (Climate Accountability Institute, 2024). Courts in Germany, the Netherlands, and Australia have admitted attribution evidence in proceedings.

Are greenwashing cases a real legal risk? Yes. Greenwashing cases grew 150% between 2022 and 2025 and are expected to accelerate further as the EU Green Claims Directive enters force in 2026. Companies making unsubstantiated net-zero claims, carbon neutrality assertions, or environmental product marketing face enforcement action from consumer protection authorities and lawsuits from NGOs and competitors. The Santos ruling in Australia demonstrated that courts will scrutinize net-zero pathways that depend on unproven or speculative technologies.

How should companies prepare for climate litigation risk? Companies should audit all public climate commitments and sustainability marketing for accuracy and substantiation, integrate litigation risk into enterprise risk management and board governance, strengthen the quality and auditability of emissions data across all scopes, monitor case law developments across key jurisdictions, and retain climate law specialists proactively rather than reactively.

Sources

• Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. (2025). Global Trends in Climate Change Litigation: 2025 Snapshot. London School of Economics.
• Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. (2026). Climate Change Litigation Databases: Global Case Tracker. Columbia Law School.
• UNEP. (2025). Global Climate Litigation Report: 2025 Status Review. United Nations Environment Programme.
• ClientEarth. (2025). Greenwashing Litigation Tracker: Case Trends and Enforcement Outcomes. ClientEarth.
• European Court of Human Rights. (2024). KlimaSeniorinnen v. Switzerland, Application No. 53600/20, Grand Chamber Judgment.
• World Weather Attribution. (2025). Attribution Science in Courts: A Review of Expert Evidence in Climate Litigation.
• Stuart-Smith, R. et al. (2025). The Role of Attribution Science in Climate Litigation. Nature Climate Change.
• European Commission. (2025). Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive: Implementation Guidance and Scope.
• ShareAction. (2025). Shareholder Resolutions and Climate Litigation: Convergence Trends in Investor Activism.
• Milieudefensie. (2025). Shell Climate Case: Timeline, Ruling, and Corporate Response.
• ACCR (Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility). (2024). Santos Federal Court Decision: Implications for Corporate Climate Claims.
• Our Children's Trust. (2025). Held v. State of Montana: Case Summary and Ongoing Proceedings.
• Climate Accountability Institute. (2024). Carbon Majors Report: Updated Analysis of Industrial Greenhouse Gas Emissions.
• Climate Observatory Brazil. (2025). Amazon Fund Disbursement Compliance: Implementation Status Report.