€1 Million Awarded for Research on the Role of Health in Climate Cases

Researchers from the Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law and the University of Groningen will examine how health arguments and scientific evidence are shaping climate change cases worldwide.

Climate change has significant adverse impacts on human health. Extreme heat, air pollution, extreme weather events, and infectious diseases can cause serious health issues and place increasing strain on public health systems. A new research project led by researchers from the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School and the Groningen Centre for Health Law at the University of Groningen will examine the role evidence of these impacts plays in legal and factual aspects in climate cases.

A key component of the project will be the further development of the Sabin Center’s Climate Litigation Database, a leading international resource tracking climate litigation worldwide. The database contains more than 4,000 climate cases from more than 55 countries. The researchers aim to enable users to search the database for health-related issues and topics specifically. In doing so, the team will build on prior research measuring engagement on health in climate litigation developed at the Groningen Centre for Health Law as part of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change.

Ultimately, the research aims to contribute to stronger legal protections for human and public health in the face of climate change, and to deepen our understanding of how courts address the health consequences of a changing climate.

The €1 million project is funded by Wellcome and is led by Michael Burger, Executive Director of the Sabin Center and Senior Research Scholar at Columbia Law School, and Marlies Hesselman at the University of Groningen. 

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