Over the past years, there has been a “rights turn” in climate litigation. Previously, most cases focused primarily on the violation of specific laws, when the court has to decide, for example, if a company is responsible for environmental damage in a specific region. Currently, a growing percentage of climate litigation employs right claims in lawsuits, with the Urgenda case as both a landmark case and turning point in climate litigation. Climate litigation has become climate change litigation. Governments worldwide are now being sued over global warming and their insufficient action to protect citizens.In the wake of the IPCC report, climate litigation bears some clear advantages over traditional consensus-based legislation in democracies for citizens to speed up climate action. In addition, even if climate cases have an unfavorable outcome, there may be positive indirect effects such as lower stock prices of grey companies and growing public awareness. This "strategic" litigation is on the rise and could be a core feature of planetary citizenship in the next decade, favored over mass demonstration (e.g. "the case of the century" was signed by 2.3 million French citizens). However, because climate litigation cases entail human rights, defensive counter-cases are also a growing phenomenon, as this report shows. This “anti climate litigation” is a logical consequence of the polarized debate and could undermine climate action. If climate laws harm some people more than others, such as farmers or construction workers, then climate litigation could lead to an arms race of cases and put heavy pressure on the already struggling Western parliaments. Sidelining the parliamentary democracy is never without risks.
