Legal action has brought important decisions, from the scrapping of fossil fuel plants to revised climate plans
This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Paris agreement. It is also a decade since another key moment in climate justice, when a state was ordered for the first time to cut its carbon emissions faster to protect its citizens from climate change. The Urgenda case, which was upheld by the Netherlands’ supreme court in 2019, was one of the first rumblings of a wave of climate litigation around the world that campaigners say has resulted in a new legal architecture for climate protection.
Over the past 12 months, there have been many more important rulings and tangible changes on climate driven by legal action.
The year started with a bang when UK government approval of the Rosebank and Jackdaw oil and gas fields in the North Sea was ruled illegal by the Scottish court of session, because it did not account for greenhouse gas emissions caused by burning the extracted fossil fuels.
The judgment relied heavily on a 2024 supreme court ruling in a climate case brought by campaigner Sarah Finch. That ruling also led the high court to throw out planning permission for a new coalmine in Whitehaven, Cumbria, after which the company withdrew its plans.
The government published new guidance in June on how these assessments should be undertaken, although the ruling does not automatically prevent regulators from approving fossil...
Legal action has brought important decisions, from the scrapping of fossil fuel plants to revised climate plans This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Paris agreement. It is also a decade sin...