By Meredith Wilensky
This paper analyzes 173 cases from the Sabin Center's Non-U.S. Climate Litigation chart, casting light on the “who, what, why, and how” of non-U.S. climate change litigation and investigating the role of the courts in the development of climate change policy outside of the United States. It represents the first comprehensive survey ever conducted of climate change litigaiton outside of the United States. It finds that there is far more climate litigation in the United States than in the rest of the world combined, and that the country with the second largest number of cases is Australia. The survey also finds that unlike the U.S., which has experienced substantial litigation intended to shape the development of climate regulations, non-U.S. climate-related cases have focused on specific projects and implementation of specific policies.
Read the report Climate Change in the Courts: An Assessment of Non-U.S. Climate Litigation in Columbia Law School's Scholarship Archive.