Our Children’s Trust is a US non-profit law firm that helps youth to fight for their right to a safe climate.They often use the Public Trust Doctrine which states that governments need to manage natural resources in the public’s best interest. They achieved two major victories in Florida and Massassachussetts.
Marine ecosystems and habitats are at the precipice of severe loss of life as we know it. Human intervention has enabled irreversible damage, which comes back to our standards of living. Indigenous communities are at the forefront of the consequences, and need safeguarding now more than ever.
The East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) is a 1,443 km heated and buried pipeline that will export oil from Hoima in Uganda to Tanga port in Tanzania. The EACOP will cost an estimated $3.5 billion to construct The construction of the pipeline has been controversial owing to environmental and social impacts, as well as concerns about the negative effects of fossil fuel use.
Licencing Schemes enforce limits on environmental harm businesses cause. They provide an avenue to prosecute those who cause environmental harm. Licencing Schemes are limited by their jurisdiction in the courts.
Tropical rainforests are important carbon sinks, capturing and storing extensive amounts of carbon. But they are also carbon sources, releasing almost as much carbon through animal and plant respiration. Climate change and deforestation may lead to increased CO2 emissions from tropical rainforests, therefore threatening this balance.
The European Parliament voted in favour of a Regulation that would restrict imports to “deforestation-free” products for EU bloc countries on a set of commodities that have been identified as key drivers of deforestation.A reduction of 31.9 million metric tons of carbon emissions is achievable with adoption of the law, which sets international precedent in regulating a high-emission supply and demand chain.The outlined definition of deforestation is weak, and the land-type to which the regulations will apply is limited to natural forests. Other ecosystems have not been considered.
The carbon cycle is a biogeochemical process in which carbon is exchanged between reservoirs through fluxes over a period of time. The dynamic equilibrium of the carbon cycle is heavily disrupted due to human emissions from burning fossil fuels and land degradation, leading to increased levels of carbon dioxide. The Keeling curve is the longest recorded graph of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere on Earth; it indicates that CO2 levels today are the highest in 800,000 years.
Within the strict interpretation of the law, “corporate environmental crimes are strictly speaking not a crime”. The 2008 Environmental Crime Directive states that there is no need to demonstrate the defendants' intention, negligence or fault concerning the harm caused.
The United States passes a climate action bill with unified Republican opposition. The Inflation Reduction Act reduces climate-warming emissions, spurred by significant investments in decarbonization. Carbon-intensive drilling projects are authorized and expanded under the bill as well.
As it hasn’t sufficiently reduced greenhouse gas emissions, the Netherlands couldn’t fulfill its duty of care towards its citizens, neither under Dutch Tort Law nor from a Human Rights perspective. According to the issuing courts there is a sufficient causal link between the greenhouse gas emissions of the Netherlands, global climate change, and the Dutch living environment, even if these emissions are relatively small. The courts played an important role in this case and were able to interfere in policy matters (despite the separation of powers) as they only set the required mitigation outcome but no specific measures on how to reach this outcome.