Climate litigation
What is climate litigation?
Climate litigation is one of several legal tools for climate action. It refers to cases brought before courts and quasi-judicial bodies – such as regulators, complaint mechanisms and international oversight bodies – that involve issues of climate change science, policy or climate law. These cases use legal systems to clarify obligations and hold governments, companies and other actors accountable for their role in the climate crisis.
Strategic climate litigation seeks broader systemic outcomes beyond the immediate dispute between the parties. Rather than only seeking individual redress for a particular harm, it uses the force of a court judgment (and the narrative and reputational impacts of bringing the case) to contribute to wider systemic change. The Urgenda Foundation v. State of the Netherlands case is one example.
How can climate litigation address climate change?
Climate litigation can address climate change by using the authority of the law to clarify obligations, enforce standards and drive change where political or voluntary action has fallen short. When a court or regulatory body issues a decision, it creates a clear legal benchmark that governments and companies are expected to follow. This makes climate litigation one of the strongest tools available for accountability.
In practice, climate litigation works by:
- Establishing enforceable legal obligations: court judgments and regulatory decisions can require governments or companies to act. This creates enforceable standards rather than voluntary commitments.
- Driving systemic change: beyond individual cases, strategic climate litigation can have systemic effects. Rather than focusing only on compensation for a specific harm, many climate cases are designed to influence how decisions are made across an entire sector or legal system. A single case can affect future policies, reshape industry practices or establish legal principles that others can rely on.
- Changing behaviour and decision-making: climate litigation can change behaviour, even beyond the parties directly involved. The prospect of legal action – or the experience of being challenged – can act as a wake-up call for decision-makers, boards and investors. It can highlight climate risks that may previously have been overlooked, including regulatory, financial and legal risks and encourage earlier or more ambitious action.
- Shaping public narratives: legal cases bring climate issues into the public domain, test industry claims using evidence, and expose gaps between stated commitments and real-world impacts. This can increase public scrutiny, inform debate and strengthen pressure for political and corporate change.
- Supporting fairer outcomes: by holding powerful actors (like businesses and governments) to account for their role in driving emissions, it can help address the imbalance between those who contribute most to climate change and those who experience its worst impacts.
What are the main types of climate litigation?
Broadly speaking, climate litigation falls into two main categories: cases against governments and cases against companies.
Cases against governments often challenge insufficient climate policies or failures to meet international commitments, holding decision-makers accountable for protecting people and the environment.
Cases against companies can be further divided into a few key areas:
- Some focus on corporate accountability, ensuring companies take responsibility for their emissions and environmental impacts.
- Others follow the polluter pays principle, seeking compensation for harm caused by corporate activities.
- A growing area looks at financial flows, examining how money moves through the system and whether investments contribute to climate harm, rather than targeting a specific policy or individual company.
Example of climate litigation: Urgenda Foundation v. State of the Netherlands
In 2015, the Dutch NGO Urgenda successfully sued the Dutch government for failing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The court ordered the government to cut emissions by at least 25% below 1990 levels by 2020.
The case is widely seen as a landmark in climate litigation because it:
- Held a government accountable for its climate commitments.
- Set a global precedent for using courts to drive systemic policy change.
- Framed climate change as a human rights issue.
- Raised public awareness, showing how legal action can influence both policy and public debate.
Urgenda is considered the starting point for strategic climate litigation, inspiring similar cases around the world.
Why is climate litigation becoming more common?
Since its inception in the US and other common law countries, climate litigation has now become a global phenomenon. Cases were identified in nearly 60 countries around the world in 2024.
Climate litigation is on the rise for several reasons:
- Worsened climate crisis: the impacts of climate change are becoming increasingly visible and severe. The law provides a vital tool for addressing these harms and seeking compensation – so as damages become clearer, more people and organisations are turning to the courts.
- Proven results: climate litigation has already shown it can make a real difference. Legal cases have helped drive climate action and hold governments and companies accountable, demonstrating that the law can uphold standards and ambition even when political approaches falter.
- Human rights at stake: climate change is increasingly recognised as a human rights issue. As climate change threaten fundamental rights, climate litigation offers a way to protect them.
- Pushing back when politics stalls: in a world where policy rollbacks are common, the law provides a clear path for action. Legal frameworks give people and organisations a way to maintain climate ambition and challenge inaction.
Climate litigation and legal action beyond the courts
Climate litigation is often associated with court cases, but many powerful forms of climate legal action take place outside traditional courtrooms. In some cases, they can be faster, more accessible, and just as influential as court proceedings.
How can quasi-judicial actions hold companies accountable for climate change?
Quasi-judicial actions are a form of climate litigation that take place outside traditional courts. They are formal, court-like processes conducted before regulators, oversight bodies or international mechanisms rather than judges. They involve formal complaints or proceedings before bodies that assess whether companies are complying with legal, regulatory or ethical standards related to climate change.
While these processes do not always result in court judgments, they operate in a similar way: they examine evidence, apply established rules or guidelines and reach findings that companies are expected to respond to.
These mechanisms can be used to challenge misleading climate claims, failures to manage climate risks or corporate practices that undermine climate goals. By triggering formal scrutiny, they require companies to justify their actions publicly and respond to clear legal or regulatory expectations. In doing so, they can expose gaps between corporate commitments and real-world behaviour, creating pressure for change.
Importantly, these processes can crystallise legal and reputational risk. Even without a court ruling, being subject to a formal complaint can prompt internal reviews, board-level attention, and investor concern. For many companies, particularly consumer-facing or investor-dependent ones, this scrutiny can be a powerful driver of behavioural change.
An example of quasi-judicial action is our ASA complaint on cruise travel agents. In 2025, we brought a complaint to the UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) challenging green claims about LNG in the cruise sector. The ASA upheld our complaint, finding that calling LNG “eco-friendly” was misleading. This set an important precedent and enabled us to pressure other ticket sellers to remove similar claims.
This case showed how climate action can extend beyond courts, using regulatory tools to hold companies accountable, drive better climate communication and push systemic change.
How do quasi-judicial actions complement court cases?
Quasi-judicial actions play a crucial role alongside court-based litigation. Court cases can be slow, costly and resource-intensive, and may not always be the most effective or proportionate tool for achieving impact. Regulatory and oversight mechanisms can often move more quickly, require fewer resources and lower the barriers to holding companies to account.
These mechanisms also allow climate advocates to act earlier, by challenging harmful practices before they become locked in or before irreversible damage occurs. In some cases, the prospect of escalation to court – combined with regulatory scrutiny – can be enough to secure changes without the need for formal litigation.
Taken together, court cases and non-court legal actions form part of a broader legal toolkit for climate action. Using them strategically makes it possible to target different actors, address different kinds of climate harm and maximise impact.
How can other non-court climate legal actions address climate change?
Not all impactful legal action involves formal complaints or proceedings. Legal submissions, interventions and letters allow civil society organisations to engage directly with institutions.
These interventions are grounded in legal analysis and evidence and are often made in response to formal calls for input from international bodies, regulators or policymakers. By setting out clear legal arguments, they can influence how obligations are understood – including states’ duties to reduce emissions, protect human rights and regulate high-emitting sectors.
Submissions to bodies such as UN Special Rapporteurs, UN treaty bodies or international courts can help shape authoritative guidance, advisory opinions or general comments that governments and courts later rely on. While these processes do not resolve disputes in the same way as litigation, they play a crucial role in developing climate law and strengthening accountability frameworks at national and international level.
Strategic letters and open letters to regulators or decision makers serve a similar function. They put legal concerns formally on record, challenge weak or unlawful approaches and warn of potential legal risks. They can be used to prompt action, influence policy decisions or lay the groundwork for future litigation if issues are not addressed.
Together, these tools allow climate advocates to intervene earlier, reach a wider range of decision makers and help shape the legal environment for climate action – often before harmful practices become entrenched.
Legal analysis and breaking down legal barriers
Legal systems, rules and frameworks shape what governments and companies can and must do on climate change. By analysing these systems and identifying barriers or gaps, we can clarify where action is needed, how existing laws can be used more effectively and where new or improved legal frameworks could accelerate climate action.
At Opportunity Green, legal analysis is a core tool for accelerating climate action. We examine how laws, regulation and international frameworks can be used – or reinterpreted – to support stronger climate outcomes and where they are being misused to delay change.
How can legal analysis help unlock climate solutions?
Legal analysis helps unlock climate solutions by separating real legal constraints from perceived ones. In many cases, governments and industries claim that stronger climate action is legally impossible – particularly in high-emitting sectors like aviation and shipping – when in fact, the law already allows, or even requires, more ambitious action.
By closely examining UK, European and international law, legal analysis can:
- Dispel legal myths and outdated interpretations that are often used to delay or weaken climate action.
- Clarify legal obligations and powers, showing what governments and companies are required and allowed to do under climate, environmental and human rights law.
- Translate legal frameworks into real-world consequences, showing how laws can affect concrete decisions in high-emitting sectors such as aviation, shipping and steel – from infrastructure approvals to emissions limits and market rules.
- Identify legal, financial and litigation risks, revealing where inaction or delay exposes actors to challenge – and where legal leverage can drive faster change.
Learn about how we’re using the law to address climate change.
