Climate, courts and conflict resolution – climate change litigation as a tool for political contestation?

Against the background of the climate crisis, courtrooms have become an increasingly important arena for political contestation and interest intermediation. As a result, climate change litigation is recognized as being of growing importance for climate protection and climate adaptation policy. During the last decade, not only a geographic spread of lawsuits has been observed but also a procedural and thematic diversification, which displays the complexity of the phenomenon of climate change litigation. Lawsuits are filed before constitutional and administrative courts against state authorities to demand more ambitious climate protection regulations or better enforcement based on national and international climate protection law as well as fundamental and human rights (e.g. Urgenda Foundation against State of the Netherlands or young Germans against the German climate law). In addition, companies are increasingly being sued based on civil law in order to enforce claims for damages or injunctive relief pointing to the cumulative historical contribution of such companies to climate change (e.g. Milieudefensie against Royal Dutch Shell; Saúl Luciano Lliuya against RWE). These observations bring up the following questions: Why are climate policy conflicts brought to court? How can the selection of cases and the respective lawsuit constellations be explained? What direct and indirect effects do climate lawsuits have? How do they influence climate protection and adaptation policies and their implementation? To answer these questions, our paper builds on research on interest groups and their usage of litigation especially in environmental policy. With the focus on the role of ENGOs, we observe not only that the majority of lawsuits are filed by individuals and Environmental Non-Governmental Organization (ENGOs), but that the latter push climate change litigation – even if they are not officially involved – to influence the debate on and governance of climate protection and adaptation. In a first step, the paper seeks to present (2) a theoretical systematization of climate change litigation from the perspective of policy-analysis and in a second step (2) a case study on lawsuits before German courts. The German case is especially interesting, because of the particular dynamic growth of litigation activities.