Economic and Regulator Forces

The economic and regulatory forces favoring climate-conscious policies, not just in Europe but globally, were already gathering pace even before Russia's invasion of Ukraine on February 24:

A long-awaited report from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), published Monday, underscored the panel's previous warnings on the urgent need to limit or eliminate emissions that contribute to global warming.
With the European Green Deal of 2020 and the recently introduced corporate due diligence bill, the European Union has staked out climate change as a key area in which it wants to show global leadership.
The Paris Agreement on climate change, a global treaty that commits signatories to reducing emissions sharply by 2030, gained new heft with the re-entry last year of the United States, the world's second-largest consumer of fossil fuels after China.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC's) proposed new rules on climate disclosure for listed companies, introduced in late March, are expected to have wide ramifications for regulation outside U.S. borders.

Over the past two years, European courts have been the site of landmark cases that now form powerful precedents for new lawsuits by NGOs and activists against governments and corporates, lawyers say. Unlike earlier waves of climate litigation, which focused primarily on quantifying the actions of polluters through tracking emissions and other measures, many of these newer cases turn on a variation of fiduciary duty, duty of care, or duty of vigilance—principles enshrined in national law.

Instant Insights /

Why 2022 Will Be a Banner Year for Climate Litigation in Europe

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