The world is on track to overshoot targets to limit global warming to no more than 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels. And the effects are already being felt: from deadly heatwaves in Europe; to wildfires in the United States; to devastating tropical cyclones and storm surges in small island nations; to coral reef damage reaching a potentially irreversible tipping point. In August, the collapse of a glacier in Nepal caused a flash flood that has been described as one of the most destructive and deadliest climate disasters ever. Beneath the global assessments are devastated lives, ruined lifeways, and ongoing upheaval for climate-vulnerable communities. Legal frameworks that were not developed to respond to the climate crisis must quickly adapt to manage these impacts and solve the justice problems they create.
There is virtually no area of law left untouched by climate change. Basic principles of tort and insurance, contracts and business, government, and criminal law are being reinterpreted in light of global warming, rising sea levels, and increasingly common extreme weather events. Moreover, governments around the world have entered into numerous international and regional climate agreements, signed treaties, and passed implementing legislation and regulations at the domestic level, which must be interpreted, applied and enforced by local justice actors.
However, when justice systems seek to uphold the many climate commitments made by States, they are, as discussed in more detail below, systematically disregarded, undermined, or even subject to improper influence, threats and attacks. How can we explain this mismatch between commitment and effort on the part of governments? And what should be done to ensure that justice systems can advance human rights and play their part in guaranteeing global survival? One of us, as U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers, and one of us as Senior External Legal Advisor to the Rapporteur, worked on a new report, which set these issues before the U.N. General Assembly in October.
Justice Systems Grappling with Climate Change
When asked to imagine “climate change litigation,” many will think of high-profile and legally inventive cases seeking more ambitious emissions reductions targets like those brought on behalf of older Swiss women or a Dutch environmental group; or the attempt by a Peruvian farmer to have an energy company held liable in a German court for the risk that glacial flooding poses to his home; or the complaint placed before the U.N. Human Rights Committee by Torres Strait Islanders, claiming that Australia is violating their human rights due to the government’s failure to address climate change.
These cases have caught the world’s attention because they demand action in novel ways. But in a warming world, courts at all levels must regularly engage with climate and environmental issues in relation to varied and sometimes unexpected areas of law. Climate change issues are becoming increasingly relevant to planning decisions, particularly for extractive projects. In the UK, the Supreme Court found that an Environmental Impact Assessment for an oil well must assess the “downstream” greenhouse gas emissions from the eventual burning of extracted oil, for example, as fuel. Environmental concerns are entwined with constitutional rights in many countries, with courts in India holding that the destruction of mangroves offends the right to life and a South African court finding that air pollution violates the constitutional right to a healthy environment. Environmental issues are also being raised in immigration cases. In the United States, federal courts have considered claims for asylum focused on the impacts of climate change in an individual’s country of origin. The Constitutional Court of Colombia has called on authorities to protect and assist individuals facing internal forced displacement due to climate change. Even the law of trusts is not immune: Canadian courts will soon be required to determine a lawsuit arguing that a pension fund has a legal duty to beneficiaries to consider climate change risks when making investment decisions.
Justice actors’ engagement with climate issues is not limited to courts. Prosecutors enforce laws and regulations that control greenhouse gas emissions and, as in Brazil, sometimes have powers to file public civil actions to protect the environment. Under regional and international law, prosecutors also have an obligation to investigate, prosecute and punish crimes committed against environmental human rights defenders, including by private actors. Lawyers represent clients seeking to uphold their right to a healthy environment through a variety of innovative legal actions, as well as defending environmental human rights defenders facing repression and criminalization. And community justice workers partner with populations that know climate disasters are not “natural” by documenting and monitoring climate impacts and transforming community demands into legal claims cognizable by the justice system.
In all these cases, justice actors stand on the front line of the climate crisis, and must navigate complex intersections between science, domestic environmental regulations, human rights, and international law. However, around the world, those actors contend not only with inadequate support, but also active–sometimes deadly–resistance to their efforts.
Too Many Expectations and Too Few Resources
Justice actors working on climate issues receive insufficient training and inadequate financial and human resources.
Judges and prosecutors are treated as generalists; governments rarely provide them with specialized education in environmental law and climate science. Meanwhile, seeking out climate-related education can expose judges to criticism and accusations of politicization, which can deter judges from pursuing training. In the United States, a new chapter of the Federal Judicial Center’s Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence addressing climate science, carefully developed in partnership with scientists, was withdrawn in the wake of attacks by climate change deniers.
Even when specialized environmental courts, benches or prosecutorial agencies exist, their work is frequently undermined by funding cuts, removal of qualified personnel or restrictions on enforcement powers. In Costa Rica, the Environmental Administrative Tribunal withstood budget cuts in 2025 that reportedly reduced its capacity. Under Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, the country’s environmental agency saw a 25 percent decrease in its budget, reductions in its staffing, and restrictions on its ability to destroy equipment used for illegal logging and mining during a period when destruction of the Brazilian rainforest accelerated, with forest fires allegedly intentionally lit by ranchers and farmers. In the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency lost an estimated 24 percent of its staff since Donald Trump began his second term.
Similarly, in many countries there is limited or no legal aid eligibility for public interest environmental cases, coupled with rules against international, third party, or crowdfunding for litigation. Lawyers also face difficulties in obtaining the information required to uphold environmental rights, including due to laws or government policies that facilitate companies’ failure to release complete data on their emissions or provide physical access to sites under their control. Such restrictions undermine the equality of arms and the right to a fair trial, and can result in irrevocable damage, preventing communities from challenging harmful projects before they commence.
Intentional Obstruction and Attacks
Beyond these passive forms of resistance to climate justice are more active, overt and alarming varieties of obstruction. In New Zealand and across the United States, laws are being enacted or promoted that would prevent certain legal claims, particularly tort law, from being used in relation to climate change, or that would grant immunities to major emitters. And in Australia, the New South Wales government is drafting legislation that is reportedly designed to circumvent a court ruling requiring a coal mine to halt its expansion.
But in many countries, justice systems are not merely thwarted from upholding climate justice. Instead, justice actors are co-opted and enlisted as weapons for perpetuating harm against the environment and environmental defenders. Courtrooms play host to strategic lawsuits against public participation, or SLAPPs, designed to harass, intimidate, or enact vengeance against environmental defenders and civil society groups. In some cases, SLAPPs are so devastating that they seem designed to secure the complete destruction of organizations and termination of their activities. Earlier this year, a court in the United States entered a final judgment against Greenpeace entities for damages of $345 million arising out of participation in Indigenous-led protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline. And around the world, climate defenders, including lawyers, are criminalized for their legitimate work.
Most devastatingly, justice actors who seek to uphold climate justice have been surveilled, threatened and killed for their work. In Bolivia, Judge Victor Claure Hinojoza of the Agro-Environmental Court was shot point-blank after working on sensitive matters, including cases concerning unlawful mining, forest fires, and land grabs. Given their proximity to impacted communities, community justice workers are particularly vulnerable. Last year, two environmental and Indigenous rights defenders who also served as paralegals were brutally murdered in the Philippines.
Climate Issues Are Rule of Law Issues
Why are States not doing more to support justice systems to uphold environmental laws and ensure a just transition to a low-carbon, sustainable future? And why are many States actively thwarting these efforts or failing to provide protection from attacks by private actors?
The answers to these questions lie in the vested interests that stand to lose from effective climate action. The climate crisis is proceeding in tandem with, and accelerated by, a global wave of autocratization and skyrocketing inequality. Populist movements claim to speak for the people but prioritize personal enrichment for elites, including from resource extraction and climate-damaging industries, engaging in aggressive deregulation and disinformation to accomplish their goals. And autocratizers subvert the rule of law to thwart accountability, including the enforcement of environmental commitments, using the same tactics that they use to resist checks on their power: capturing and curbing judicial systems, instrumentalizing criminal and civil law, and harassing or harming legal personnel. These strategies not only impair the realization of the right to a healthy environment. They also erode the integrity of judicial institutions and the rule of law.
Local and Global Solutions
If climate change is a rule of law crisis, effective climate action demands rule of law solutions. Urgent action is needed to guarantee judicial independence, uphold prosecutorial integrity, protect the free exercise of the legal profession, and champion the rights of community justice workers.
Governments and justice actors must accept that to be a proficient legal professional in the twenty-first century, a firm grasp of environmental issues is essential. Governments should ensure judges and prosecutors have access to initial and ongoing climate science training. Law faculties should prepare lawyers to act competently in the context of the climate crisis. Bar associations should provide continuing legal education on climate change. Community justice workers should be recognized for the role they play in extending access to justice for climate-impacted populations.
Specialization, through the creation of environmental courts and prosecutorial units, may contribute to enhanced quality, speed and effectiveness of legal action. In the Philippines, a new “Green Justice Zone” was launched by the Supreme Court in 2023 to institute structured cooperation between criminal justice agencies in environmental protection cases. Where specialized services exist, they must receive adequate staffing and resources, and specialization must not reduce the transparency of court proceedings or opportunities for public participation.
Governments, judges, prosecutors, and lawyers must do their part to halt the use of justice systems to bully, silence, and restrict environmental human rights defenders through SLAPPs or criminalization. Bar associations should recognize the existential risk of climate change by developing guidance on lawyers’ obligations to withdraw services from activities that plainly advance climate harms, or seek to avoid environmental regulation.
Finally, elected leaders must stop politicizing competence in climate law and science. Capability in environmental cases is not activism. Climate cases will come to court whether political representatives agree or not; it is in everyone’s interests for justice actors to be competent when they do.
