Over the last decades, climate change has become an issue of ever-growing importance. With evolving scientific understanding of the causes of climate change and the current and anticipated impacts of global warming, there has been growing frustration at the speed of legislative and policy action. This is despite the continued efforts at intergovernmental level, including the Paris Agreement 2015, by which signatories commit to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to hold global average temperature increase to well below 2.0 degrees above pre-industrial levels, and pursue efforts to limit the increase even further to 1.5 degrees.

For more information, see Practice Note: The Paris Agreement 2015—snapshot.

Increasingly, resort is therefore had to litigation and courts have had to deal with climate change arguments presented in various shapes and factual contexts. Indeed, according to data published in July 2022, litigation continued to expand in 2021 as an avenue for action on climate change. It is evident that the Paris Agreement has, far from reducing such