Climate Change Litigation as a Tool for Environmental Policy Reform: Trends and

Abstract

Lawsuits against climate change have become one of the most significant processes in the last twenty years as citizens, civil-society groups, and sub-national states attempt to coerce more ambitious environmental policy where legislative and executive efforts have reached an impasse. This paper reviews the rise, geographic dispersion and doctrinal nature of climate litigation, including the phase leading up to 2021, when the first post-longstanding precedents were decided against both states and private corporations, heralding the start of a new era of judicial readiness to recognize and apply climate science and human-rights-based arguments. The study, based on a doctrinal and comparative approach, examines the top cases in the Netherlands, Germany, the United States, Pakistan, and Colombia to see the most common judicial strategies, such as the constitutional rights framing, the doctrine of public trust, tort-based causation, and administrative review of regulatory inaction. The article states that climate litigation acts not so as an alternative to legislative policymaking but rather as an activating and corrective mechanism that helps decrease the gap between the proclaimed governmental commitments and implemented regulatory actions. It also points to structural limitations - standing doctrines, separation-of-powers issues, and evidentiary burdens of causation - that have persistently constrained the transformative power of courts. The paper ends by providing a set of recommendations on how to enhance the enabling legal architecture of climate litigation, such as improved standing requirements, statutory provisions of intergenerational equity, and more deeply incorporating the scientific evidence into the judicial process.