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Rebecca Mooney - 29th January 2020
The Netherlands’ supreme court has ruled that the state has ‘direct legal obligations’ to reduce carbon emissions by at least 25% by the end of 2020, compared to 1990 levels (Urgenda v The State of the Netherlands, 20 December 2019), following a detailed Advisory Opinion of the Attorney General and Procurator General. An unprecedented victory […]
Adaena Sinclair-Blakemore - 28th January 2020
On 7 January 2020, the UN Human Rights Committee (HRC) issued a landmark ruling in which it recognised, for the first time, that forcibly returning a person to a place where their life would be at risk due to the adverse effects of climate change may violate the right to life under article 6 of […]
Jamie McLoughlin - 18th October 2019
Recently, the Irish High Court handed down judgment in the case of Friends of the Irish Environment v The Government of Ireland and Others or ‘Climate Case Ireland’. The case involved a challenge brought via judicial review proceedings, by Friends of the Irish Environment, an environmental NGO, against the ‘National Mitigation Plan’ adopted by the […]
Patrick McGinley - 23rd July 2019
In late May, a U.S. Appeals court heard oral arguments in a U.S. government effort to stop a trial in a climate case some have referred to as “the trial of the century.” The case began in 2015 when 21 young Americans from diverse backgrounds filed a lawsuit charging that the United States government and […]
Alex May - 9th November 2018
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (‘IPCC’) recently released its Special Report on the Impacts of Global Warming above 1.5 oC. (Monday 8thOctober 2018). A human rights perspective is useful for understanding what this means and has legal potential for forcing states to take action. The Report The IPCC was asked by the 2015 Paris […]
Everaldo Lamprea and Daniela García - 13th April 2018
On April 4, 2018, the Colombian Supreme Court handed down an important ruling (Tutela, a rights-based injunction) on climate change. The plaintiffs in the case are twenty-five children who argued that the rapid deforestation of the Amazonian basin, which comprises 35% of Colombia’s territory, is contributing to global warming and affecting their rights, as well […]
Patruni Srilakshmi - 9th April 2018
The recent hurricanes that hit the coast of the Caribbean have renewed the fears of a global climate refugee crisis. However, there is a lack of clarity on who exactly constitutes a climate refugee and what human rights protections they are entitled to. The UNHRC has stated that almost 36 million people have been displaced by […]