This chapter presents the results of a comprehensive study of the universe of rights-based climate cases filed in domestic courts and in regional and international judicial and quasi-judicial bodies between 2015 and 2021. Part I offers an overview of human rights-based climate change (HRCC) litigation. Part II analyzes the legal rules and principles emerging from HRCC lawsuits and court decisions around the world. Part III offers conclusions about the potential and limitations of HRCC litigation in advancing climate action.The chapter argues that the regulatory logic and the strategy of HRCC litigation should be examined at the intersection of international and domestic governance. Litigants have predominantly followed a two-pronged strategy. They have (1) asked courts to take the goals of the climate regime (as set out in the Paris Agreement and IPCC reports) as benchmarks to assess governments’ policies and (2) invoked the norms and enforcement mechanisms of human rights to hold governments accountable for such goals. In the face of governments’ reluctance in taking the urgent measures that are needed to address the climate emergency, HRCC litigation can be fruitfully viewed as a bottom-up mechanism that provides domestic traction for the international legal and scientific consensus on climate action.

To comply with its human rights obligations, how much does an individual state have to do reduce greenhouse gas emissions within its jurisdiction and by when? And what are the criteria by which a tribunal can objectively assess the adequacy of a state’s efforts to reduce emissions? This chapter proposes five tests, building on the practice of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR), for such an assessment. First, has every feasible human rights-consistent step been taken by the state to reduce emissions? Second, is the state subsidizing emissions, disproportionately allocating resources to spending that does not benefit the public, or failing to take adequate steps to mobilize resources towards emissions reduction? Third, is the climate plan reasonably ambitious in comparison to peer states at comparable levels of development? Fourth, has there been a progressive increase in ambition and avoidance of any retrogression? Fifth, are the state’s plans to reduce emissions in line with limiting the global temperature increase to 1.5°C? A sixth test addresses the “how” question, rather than “how much or how fast”: is the manner in which emissions are being limited consistent with human rights standards?

The chapter opens with the historic decision by the Philippines Human Rights Commission that carbon-major companies can be liable for climate-induced harms. While this decision has no direct legal impact on companies, it illustrates the ever closer connection between human rights and climate impacts. The chapter assesses the transnational business and human rights landscape, primarily through an assessment of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and illustrated by a recent dispute mediated by the Dutch National Contact Point under the OECD Guidelines on the climate impacts of ING’s lending practices. It charts the two waves of climate-based litigation against states and companies, with a focus on cases in the United States, The Netherlands, and Pakistan and two recent UK cases. The chapter provides an assessment of the direct overlap between human rights and climate litigation with the RWE v Lliuya case and the Philippines Human Rights Commission’s investigation of carbon-majors. The chapter closes with a look at the potential crystallisation of corporate climate obligations in the future through the Principles of Climate Obligations of Enterprises and the barrier that separate legal personality poses within corporate groups to the success of climate litigation efforts.