Climate Change Litigation: Guide for Public Health Professionals

By Giovanna Mazzola, WFPHA Environmental Health Working Group

The past several years have seen a significant increase of litigation over actions or inaction related to climate change. The total number of climate change court cases has more than doubled since 2017 and is growing worldwide. While most cases have been brought in the United States (US), Europe, the United Kingdom (UK), and Australia, about 17% of cases are now being reported also in developing countries, including Small Island Developing States. Climate change litigation is thus becoming an integral part of securing climate action and justice, as an effective tool to affect “the outcome and ambition of climate governance”. By using litigation to oblige governments and private sector polluters to address the climate emergency, claimants have been pushing for more ambitious regulations, opposing regulatory steps or new plans and proposed developments, or even requesting compensation measures for human harm. Moreover, climate litigation creates opportunities for public scrutiny and debate, raising awareness around governments’ inaction or harm caused by private sector polluters.

The success of climate litigation mainly relies on compiling a sufficient level of scientific evidence of current and likely future health impacts on populations. Strong cooperation between the legal and scientific communities is thus essential to the successful outcome of climate change litigation when harm to human health is at issue. Yet, public health experts are often unaware of the opportunities offered by litigation and of their crucial role in collecting, securing, and presenting evidence of harm to human health.

To address this gap, the European Public Health Association (EUPHA), the Faculty of Public Health (UK), the Groningen Centre for Health Law, the Aletta Jacobs School of Public Health (Netherlands), and other partners have developed a Guide on climate change litigation for public health professionals. The Guide will be released at the 16th European Public Health Conference in Dublin in November 2023.

With the assistance of the Environmental Health Working Group of the WFPHA, the Guide’s content draws on suggestions made by WFPHA member organizations and public health experts, who were surveyed to ascertain their interest in the proposed Guide and to advise on its content and use. Over 70 completed surveys were received. The survey assessed the level of engagement and interest shared by respondents in climate change issues and their current level of cooperation with local legal expertise. Overall, the results demonstrated that there is a keen interest in the public health community to better understand the importance of climate change litigation in addressing climate-related injustice and the opportunities offered by interdisciplinary collaboration. Yet, while most respondents (79,2%) reported they are already working on issues related to climate change, many of them (57%) declared not to have ready access to legal expertise, either internal or external, for guidance on policy matters.

The Guide will be available from the Faculty of Public Health website, which also contains other useful related resources for public health professionals.