What is climate litigation?

Litigation has long been an important tool to force companies and governments to act on environmental matters and to hold them to account - and climate change is no exception.

Climate litigation began in the 1980s but the number of lawsuits has exploded since 2015, when a campaign group called Urgenda first took legal action against the Dutch government. As of early 2026, there were more than 3,000 climate-related lawsuits around the world filed by legal groups, campaigners, individuals and public bodies, mostly trying to increase climate ambition but sometimes aiming to thwart it.

Many of these cases challenge national governments over their climate mitigation and adaptation strategies. But the world’s most polluting companies are increasingly being targeted for their inaction on climate change and attempts to spread misinformation. Although the fossil fuel industry is mostly in the spotlight, the cement, food and agriculture, transport, plastics and finance sectors are increasingly targets as well.

Climate litigation has proved an effective strategy for boosting climate action. It was identified in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s latest report as one of several important new avenues through which climate policy is being shaped around the world.

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