Climate change is increasingly being harnessed as a human rights issue in legal claims and court cases around the world, as the mass popularity of disruptive climate activism over the past year – such as the protests from Extinction Rebellion in the UK – starts to influence how courts address the issue. That is the broad conclusion from a global review of climate litigation carried out by the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), which analyses climate-related legal actions in the year since May 2019.
Released today, the findings indicate that as awareness and concern about the impacts of climate change on society grows, there are increasing instances of activists, advocacy groups, and city and regional authorities turning to the courts to further climate action. The majority of cases are still being tried in the US, where there were more than 1,200 climate lawsuits in the year ending in May 2020, according to the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law’s database. Across 36 countries excluding the US, meanwhile, the database featured 374 court cases and eight regional or international jurisdictions, as well as almost 1,900 climate laws and policies in 198 jurisdictions, the study found.
There are also growing numbers of court cases around the world which seek to present combatting climate change as a human rights obligation for governments, with the study highlighting ongoing legal proceedings along these lines in Ireland, France, Belgium, Sweden, Switzerland, Germany, the US, Canada, Peru, and South Korea.
Source: Business Green
Finnish site 
Global site