Tim van der Vooren and Joyeeta Gupta have published a new paper on climate litigation against fossil fuel corporations in International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics (INEA).

We’re extremely proud to share that our recently-joined Junior Researcher Tim van der Vooren and Principal Investigator Prof. dr. Joyeeta Gupta have published their paper ‘Private Climate Litigation Against Fossil Fuel Corporations: A Contextual Analysis’ with Springer Nature in INEA. This paper is the first article published in the Special Issue ‘Climate Change and Strategies to Leave Fossil Fuel Underground’.

As the impacts of climate change are starting to manifest around the globe, courts have, in the last years, seen a surge in climate cases trying to hold accountable the actors that are responsible for the majority of emissions. Yet, there is a mismatch: while 70% of historical emissions can be attributed to the 78 largest fossil fuel corporations and state-owned entities, only 5.7% of all climate litigation cases have been filed against these same companies.

Due to a lack of research into cases against fossil fuel corporations and overall trends in cases against fossil fuel corporations across different geographies, including in terms of arguments used and success rates, this research asked the question: