Climate Change Litigation through Constitutional and Human Rights Claims

Over the last decade, an increasing number of climate change-related lawsuits have been submitted in front of national courts worldwide. The attempts to adopt international instruments to tackle climate change and the great amount of laws that have been enacted at national level have proved ineffective to achieve the objectives repeatedly set out by the scientific community, which recognise the need to take immediate action to avoid the catastrophic consequences deriving from this phenomenon. Combating climate change constitutes the main environmental challenge of our century, but despite the international consensus on its causes and consequences, States have not been able to find effective solutions to this threat. As a reaction to these critical elements, courts around the world face a constantly growing number of climate-related cases and have the opportunity to play a significant role in leading governments and private actors in better responding to the challenges posed by global warming. Among the variety of climate change litigation that have been filled worldwide, the present final dissertation will focus on the so-called public law litigation, namely those actions usually brought by a group of individuals represented by a no-profit organisation against their government or other public authorities, with the of aim of leading to the adoption of more ambitious and effective measures to tackle climate change. In addition, this elaborate will analyse the quite new tendency towards recognising the unavoidable link between climate change and the enjoyment of human rights, which is connected with the increasing submission of human rights arguments in climate change litigation. Therefore, the aim of this work is to evaluate whether the judiciary may effectively contribute in the fight against global warming by imposing an obligation on national government to adopt more stringent laws and measures so as to mitigate the risks connected with climate change. However, as it will be show throughout the chapters of this work, even if some important developments have been reached, much remain still to be done, since national courts encounter many obstacles that interfere with obtaining favourable outcome in this type of litigation.