Is Effective Climate Change Litigation, the One-Step Solution for Combating Risk Management on Climate?

Xavier Law School, St. Xavier's University Kolkata, India

Abstract: Climate change is frequently portrayed in abstract terms as a temporally and spatially distant issue. It is something so massively distributed in time and space relative to humans that we cannot begin to properly comprehend it. Moreover, climate change lacks an identifiable enemy, and resembles only a creeping problem. Numerous failed attempts to clear judicial thresholds with regard to standing, proof of harm and causation, a new wave of private climate change lawsuits can be identified, and it is by no means doomed to failure. This is because climate change litigation takes place in a rapidly evolving scientific, discursive, and constitutional context, which generates new opportunities for judges to rethink the interpretation of existing legal and evidentiary requirements and apply them in a way that will enhance the accountability of major private carbon producers. Judicial enforcement of corporate accountability for climate change has proved elusive, future cases may fare better.