This database contains domestic, regional and international case-law related to human rights and climate change (work on completing the database is in progress). Click on an entry to see more information about a given case, including summaries, commentary, and links to further information.
Verein KlimaSeniorinnen et al. v. Switzerland
Summary: In 2016, the Senior Women for Climate Protection Switzerland (German: ‘Verein KlimaSeniorinnen’), a Swiss organisation, brought proceedings concerning the…
Vanuatu’s Request for an ICJ Advisory Opinion
Summary: In September 2021, during the UN General Assembly’s annual meeting, the Prime Minister of the Republic of Vanuatu, Hon….
Urgenda Foundation v. the Netherlands
Summary: This case, brought in 2013 by the Urgenda foundation and hundreds of Dutch citizens against the Netherlands, has become…
Tristan Runge et al. v. Sachsen
Summary: This case is one of ten separate constitutional complaints and one subsidiary popular complaint supported by the NGO Deutsche…
Thomas & De Freitas v. Guyana
Summary: On 21 May 2021, two Guayanese citizens filed a case in the domestic courts of Guayana, alleging that their…
The Prosecutor v. Bolsonaro
Summary: On 12 October 2021, the Austrian NGO AllRise, which advocates for interests linked with the environment, democracy, and the…
The Norwegian Grandparents’ Climate Campaign and Others v. Norway
Summary:This case was filed on 26 March 2021 by The Norwegian Grandparents’ Climate Campaign (or Besteforeldrenes klimaaksjon, see the NGO’s…
Thalita Silva e Silva and Others v. Minister of Environment et al.
Summary: This case was brought before the 14th Federal Civil Court of Sao Paulo by six youths as a popular…
Statnett SF et al. v. Sør-Fosen sijte et al.
Summary: In this judgment of 11 October 2021, the Supreme Court of Norway found that the construction of two wind…
Stasiak, Górska, Nowakowski and others v. Poland
Summary: In June 2021, the NGO ClientEarth announced that it was supporting five Polish citizens in bringing actions against the…
South African ‘Deadly Air Case’
Summary: This case concerns toxic air pollution in the Mpumalanga Highveld, which is home to a dozen coal-fired power plants,…
Soubeste and 4 other applications v. Austria and 11 other States
Summary: On 21 June 2022, it was reported that an application had been filed at the European Court of Human…
Sheila Watt-Cloutier et al. v. the United States of America
Summary: Filed in 2005 by members of the Inuit people living in Canada, this application concerned the climate change-related responsibility…
Sharma and Others v. Minister for the Environment
Summary: In Sharma and Others v. Minister for the Environment, issued on 27 May 2021 by the Federal Court of…
Sacchi et al. v. Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany & Turkey
Summary: On 23 September 2019, 16 children, among them teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg, filed a petition before the Committee…
Riddhima Pandey v. Union of India and Others
Summary: The petitioner, Riddhima Pandey, a 9-year old girl residing in the Indian State of Uttarakhand, approached the National Green…
Reynolds and Others v. Florida
Summary: In this case, eight young people asserted that the “deliberate indifference” of the US state of Florida, its Governor…
R (on the application of Friends of the Earth Ltd and others) v Heathrow Airport Ltd
Summary: On 26 June 2018, the UK Secretary of State for Transport adopted the Airports National Policy Statement (ANPS), which…
Plan B. Earth and Others v. the United Kingdom
Summary: On 11 July 2022, an application against the United Kingdom was filed before the European Court of Human Rights…
Padam Bahadur Shrestha v. Office of Prime Minister and Others
Summary: The petitioner, Padam Bahadur Shrestha, had applied to the concerned authorities in Nepal to enact a separate law on…
Otis Hoffman et al. v. Mecklenburg-Vorpommern
Summary: This case is one of ten separate constitutional complaints and one subsidiary popular complaint supported by the NGO Deutsche…
Okpabi and Others v. Royal Dutch Shell and Others
Summary: In October and December 2015, the Ogale and Bille Nigerian communities filed parallel complaints against the UK company Royal…
Notre Affaire à Tous and Others v. Total
Summary: Along with 13 municipalities and four other NGOs, the French environmental organization Notre Affaire à Tous requested the oil…
Notre Affaire à Tous and Others v. France (‘L’affaire du siècle’)
Summary: The L’affaire du siècle (French for “affair of the century”) is a French climate justice campaign initiated by four…
Ministério Público Federal v. de Rezende
Summary: This case concerns the responsibility of an individual (a farmer in the Amazonia region of Brazil) for deforestation and…
Milieudefensie and others v. Royal Dutch Shell PLC
Summary: This case was brought as a class action tort suit by a group of NGOs, as well as more…
Mex Müllner v. Austria
Summary: On 25 March 2021, a yet-uncommunicated application was filed before the European Court of Human Rights concerning the impact…
Mbabazi and Others v. The Attorney General of Uganda and Others
Summary: This case was brought by a group of four young people, along with an NGO, alleging that the government…
Mayagna (Sumo) Awas Tingni Community v. Nicaragua
Summary: The Awas Tingni community, an indigenous community of the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua, had no real property title deed…
Matteo Feind et al. v. Niedersachsen
Summary: This case is one of ten separate constitutional complaints and one subsidiary popular complaint supported by the NGO Deutsche…
Marlene Lemme et al. v. Bayern
Summary: This case is one of ten separate constitutional complaints and one subsidiary popular complaint supported by the NGO Deutsche…
Luca Salis et al. v. Sachsen-Anhalt
Summary:This constitutional complaint was brought by three young people against the German State (“Bundesland”) of Sachsen-Anhalt in the wake of…
Lho’imggin et al. v. Canada
Summary: This case was brought by two houses of the Wet’suwet’en indigenous group against Canada on 10 February 2020. The…
Les Amis de la Terre, Survie v. Total SA
Summary: Total S.A. is a French energy company with oil projects in Uganda and Tanzania. According to the French “loi…
Leonie Frank et al. v. Saarland
Summary:This case is one of ten separate constitutional complaints and one subsidiary popular complaint supported by the NGO Deutsche Umwelthilfe…
Leghari v. Pakistan
Summary: In Leghari v. Pakistan, a farmer claimed that his fundamental rights, including the right to life, the right to…
Lausanne Action Climate v. Switzerland
Summary: On 5 November 2011, four climate activists submitted an application to the European Court of Human Rights challenging the…
Laboratório do Observatório do Clima v. Minister of Environment and Brazil
Facts of the case: This is a class action suit brought before the 7th Federal Environmental and Agrarian Court of…
Klimatická žaloba ČR and others v. Czechia
Summary: This case was brought by a group of applicants, named in the brief as the climate action NGO Klimatická…
Juliana et al. v. USA et al.
Summary: On 12 August 2015, the case of Juliana v. the United States was filed in the U.S. District Court…
Jannis Krüssmann et al. v. Nordrhein-Westfalen (NWR)
Summary:This case is one of ten separate constitutional complaints and one subsidiary popular complaint supported by the NGO Deutsche Umwelthilfe…
Ioane Teitiota v. New Zealand
Summary: The applicant submitted that New Zealand had violated his right to life under the ICCPR by removing him to…
Interim Order against Nepali Fiscal Policy
Summary: On 18 June 2021 the Supreme Court of Nepal issued an interim order requiring the government not to implement…
IACtHR Advisory Opinion on the Right to a Healthy Environment
Summary: In this advisory opinion, requested by Colombia, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights recognized that the right to a…
Humane Being v. the United Kingdom
Summary: On 26 July 2022, the NGO Humane Being submitted an application to the European Court of Human Rights arguing…
Held and Others v. Montana
Summary: In Held and Others, sixteen young plaintiffs — aged between two and eighteen — brought a case against the…
Greenpeace Southeast Asia and others v. the Carbon Majors
Summary: This case was brought before the Philippines’ Commission on Human Rights (CHR) by 12 organisations and 20 individuals, as…
Greenpeace Nordic and Others v. Norway
Summary: This case was the fourth climate change case brought to the European Court of Human Rights. It was brought…
Greenpeace Mexico v. Ministry of Energy and Others
Summary: This indirect amparo suit was brought by Greenpeace Mexico against the Mexican government, contesting the Mexican Sectoral Energy Plan…
Greenpeace et al. v. Austria (The Zoubek Case)
Summary:On 20 February 2020, Greenpeace Austria and other applicants called on the Austrian Constitutional Court to invalidate the preferential tax…
Giudizio Universale (The Last Judgment) (A Sud v. Italy)
Summary: In June 2021, the Giudizio Universale (The Last Judgment) campaign, coordinated by the environmental justice NGO A Sud, filed…
Friends of the Irish Environment v. Government of Ireland
Summary: In this case, brought before the Irish Supreme Court by the environmental activist group Friends of the Irish Environment,…
ENVironnement JEUnesse v. Canada
Summary: In 2018, the environmental NGO ENvironnement JEUnesse applied for leave to bring a class action case against the Canadian…
Engels and Others v. Germany
Summary: Following the Neubauer v. Germany case, nine teenagers and young adults brought an application to the European Court of…
Emma Johanna Kiehm et al. v. Brandenburg
Summary:This case is one of ten separate constitutional complaints and one subsidiary popular complaint supported by the NGO Deutsche Umwelthilfe…
Edy Mulyono and three others v. Holcim AG
Summary: On 11 July 2022, a case was filed with the conciliation authority in the Swiss canton of Zug concerning…
Duarte Agostinho et al. v. Austria et al.
Summary: This case was brought by a group of six young people, acting together as the ‘Youth for Climate Justice’,…
Do-Hyun Kim et al. v. South Korea
Summary: On 13 March 2020, nineteen teenagers from across South Korea initiated proceedings against their government (the National Assembly of…
DeJusticia (Rodríguez Peña and others) v. Colombia
Summary: On 5 April 2018, the Colombian Supreme Court of Justice ordered the protection of the Colombian Amazon from deforestation,…
De Conto and Uricchio v. Italy and 32 other States
Summary: In 2021, two further cases in the style of the Duarte Agostinho application were brought before the European Court…
Credit Suisse Climate Activists Trial (Lausanne)
Summary:On 22 November 2018, a group of 20 to 30 climate activists from the collective “BreakFree Suisse”, among them the…
Cosima Rade et al. v. Baden-Württemberg
Summary:This case is one of ten separate constitutional complaints and one subsidiary popular complaint supported by the NGO Deutsche Umwelthilfe…
Commune de Grande-Synthe v. France
Summary: This case was brought to the French Conseil d’Etat by the municipality of Grande-Synthe, which is a low-lying coastal…
Center for Food and Adequate Living Rights Limited et al. v. Tanzania, Uganda and the East African Community
Summary: This case was filed on 6 November 2020 and is currently pending before the East African Court of Justice….
Cecilia La Rose v Her Majesty the Queen
Facts of the case: Plaintiffs comprising of 15 children and youths from various parts of Canada sued the Government and…
Carême v. France
Summary: On 7 June 2022, the European Court of Human Rights announced the relinquishment of an application against France concerning…
Bundesverfassungsgericht, Order of 25 May 2022
Summary: On 24 June 2022 it was announced that the German Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht or BVerfG) had refused to…
Bundesverfassungsgericht, Order of 24 March 2021 (Neubauer v. Germany)
Summary: On 21 April 2019, the German Federal Constitutional Court (‘Bundesverfassungsgericht’) issued a historic judgment quashing parts of the German…
Billy et al. v. Australia (Torres Straits Islanders case)
Summary: This petition against Australia was brought to the UN Human Rights Committee by a group of eight indigenous Torres…
Belgian ‘Klimaatzaak’
Summary: On 17 June 2021, a Brussels court of first instance issued its judgment in the Urgenda-inspired Belgian “Klimaatzaak” (Dutch…
Álvarez et al. v. Peru
Summary: This amparo case was filed before the Superior Court of Justice of Lima, Peru, on 16 December 2019. Brought…
Austrian Fridays for Future case
Summary: On 21 February 2023, it was announced that a climate case had been brought by twelve children before the…
Australian Torres Straits Islanders case
Summary: In the Australian Torres Straits Islanders case, modelled on the Dutch Urgenda case, a group of indigenous Torres Strait…
Asociación Civil por la Justicia Ambiental v. Province of Entre Ríos et al. (Paraná Delta case)
Summary: This case, brought to the Supreme Court of Argentina after severe fires in a wetland ecosystem in the Paraná…
Armando Carvalho and Others v. Parliament
Summary: This case, also known as ‘The People’s Climate Case’, was brought by families from different Member States of the…
Arctic Athabaskan Council v. Canada
Summary: This case, brought before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights by Athabaskan people living in Canada, concerned alleged rights…
Ali v. Pakistan
Summary: This 2016 petition was brought against Pakistan in the name of a seven-year-old girl from Karachi, and challenges actions…
Alena Hochstadt et al. v. Hessen
Summary:This case is one of ten separate constitutional complaints and one subsidiary popular complaint supported by the NGO Deutsche Umwelthilfe…
Aji P. and Others v. the State of Washington
Summary: This case was brought by 13 young people aged between 8 and 18 who sued the US State of…
Credit Suisse Climate Activists Trial (Geneva)
Summary:On 13 October 2018, during a climate march in Geneva, a young climate activist from the collective “BreakFree Suisse” spread…
The database is correct to the best of our knowledge, and is regularly updated. Errors and omissions may, however, occur.