Whose Side Is the Law On? How the Courts Became a Climate Battleground

"Even if you are small in this society, there is something you can do."

Those are the words of Trixy Elle, a mother and a fisherwoman from the Philippines, and one of the claimants from the Odette case, named for the super typhoon she lived through. She may never win in court, but she says that isn’t the point. She is one of more than 100 claimants suing the energy giant Shell, demanding justice and accountability for the losses she has experienced as a result of climate change.

This week, Christiana Figueres sits down with Joana Setzer and Catherine Higham, two of the authors of the ninth annual Global Trends in Climate Change Litigation report from the Grantham Research Institute at LSE and the Sabin Center at Columbia Law School. And what they find is complex.

There have been cases that have captured the world’s attention. Last year’s ICJ advisory opinion on the obligations of states. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights’ landmark advisory opinion establishing a human right to a healthy climate. Or the 2015 case brought by the Urgenda Foundation, where a Dutch court told the government it had a legal duty to protect its citizens from climate change, and ordered it to cut emissions faster. But beneath the headlines, courts on every continent have been litigating how far that duty of care goes and what it looks like. More than 3,600 cases filed across 62 countries - last year at a rate of five a week. And of the 215 that have reached the highest national courts, more than half have gone in a direction favourable to climate action.

But a maturing field cuts both ways: for every Urgenda-style case there is now a countermove - laws to shield companies from liability, suits designed to stop protest, even governments weighing whether to walk away from their commitments altogether.

So what happens when the law gets ahead of the politics? And who holds the structure together when, as Christiana puts it, nobody is orchestrating the Jenga game?

Learn More: 🔎 Read the executive summary of Global Trends in Climate Change Litigation: 2026 Snapshot - or the full report (Grantham Research Institute, LSE / Sabin Center) ⚖️ Urgenda Foundation v. State of the Netherlands - the 2015 ruling, upheld in 2019, that a government has a legal duty to protect its citizens from climate change 📋 Our recent episodes on the ICJ advisory opinion, the Revolution Wind lawsuit, and the New Zealand pushback

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Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks Editing by: Miles Martignoni Planning: Caitlin Hanrahan Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford

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