Abstract
According to overwhelming scientific evidence, anthropogenic climate change is one of the most pressing threats to human lives, livelihoods, and democratic institutions. Environmental activists have sought to enforce liability for these climatic changes in different fora, and yet, the institutional response has been laggard and suboptimal. The Judiciary, on the other hand, has been successful in enforcing climate change mitigation through a new body of environmental law that combines, inter alia, international, human rights, constitutional and tort law; climate change litigation (CCL). Public actors are the usual focus of CCL to compel them to enact more stringent environmental regulation, but little attention has been given to corporations, especially Carbon Majors, despite being the main contributors to climate change. In the Netherlands, the Milieudefensie et al. v. Royal Dutch Shell plc. case ruled that corporations can be found liable for breaching their Duty of Care and human rights obligations towards Dutch citizens, if they fail to curb Greenhouse Gas emissions responsible for climate change. In Spain, despite being one of the most vulnerable European countries to climate change, and hosting some of the most emitting oil and gas multinationals, no similar legal study has been carried out yet. For this reason, this research fills this detected knowledge gap and contribute to the ongoing Climate Justice scholarship by showing a possible pathway to reach a similar ruling in Spain against a national Carbon Major, following the legal findings of Milieudefensie.
Presenters
Ignacio Portela GiráldezInstitutional Relations Officer, Foreign Action and European Union, Government of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
Technical, Political, and Social Responses
KEYWORDS
Corporate liability, Tort law, Duty of care, Environmental justice, Comparative
