Climate Litigation Accelerator

The Climate Litigation Accelerator (CLX) is a global collaborative hub for research, advocacy, and strategic litigation on the climate emergency. Working with scholars, activists, and litigants from around the world, CLX initiates and supports efforts that build the speed and scale necessary to spur action on the climate emergency within the limited timeframe left to avoid triggering extreme scenarios of global warming. CLX helps fill gaps in existing practice, connects litigants and experts in different fields (from climate science to strategic communications to ecology to climate economics), and spearheads and supports climate lawsuits and other forms of advocacy.

As a field catalyst, CLX coalesces the climate change and human rights field, connects its participants, and facilitates interdisciplinary dialogue – all with an eye towards adding coherence to the field and improving its overall efficacy.

Moreover, CLX recognizes the complexity of the challenges posed by the climate crisis. Indeed, climate change is not one problem, but rather a bundle of interconnected problems that includes mitigation, adaptation, loss and damage, and climate finance. For that reason, the topical and regional scope of CLX’s work is broad and crosses traditional disciplinary lines

 

CLX’s Strategic Aims

Develop, nourish, disseminate, and catalyze the ideas, tools, strategies, and partnerships necessary speed up and scale global climate litigation. CLX achieves this through strategic lawsuits and advocacy, sociolegal research, case workshops, capacity building, and its global community of practice.

 

Create public goods for the climate litigation field. Public goods can have a catalyzing effect, helping to accelerate the rate at which different actors can learn from others and implement relevant lessons.

 

Facilitate the sharing of interdisciplinary knowledge and regional perspectives, which strengthens the climate litigation field and helps bridge the Global North-South divide within the field. In service of this strategic aim, CLX acts as a connector – of organizations, peoples, and ideas.

 

Serve as a catalyst for the climate change and human rights field. CLX is driven by an awareness of the urgency of the climate challenge. Time is of the essence. CLX is fundamentally concerned with speeding up impactful litigation and legal actions that can produce results in the short to medium-term. Our activities also accelerate the development of the field, working to ensure that it is capable of responding quickly and effectively to the challenges posed by climate change.

 

Support youth advocates and climate defenders, especially in the Global South. CLX’s theory of change understands that, without direct and urgent grassroots mobilization, legal victories will not attain the legitimacy, scale, and speed that are needed to address the climate emergency. We thus act as key partners and sources of strategic and legal support for the global climate movement and climate defenders, with an emphasis on activists based in the Global South.

 

CLX Activities 

To carry out its mission, CLX engages in seven primary activities:

  1. Strategic litigation, legal actions, and advocacy;
  2. Climate action incubation;
  3. Sociolegal research;
  4. Capacity building;
  5. The Global Community of Practice;
  6. Movement building through legal support for youth climate activists and climate defenders; and
  7. Targeted research, legal actions, and network building on loss and damage.

Although CLX is focused on legal actions, its approach to strategic litigation and legal advocacy has been informed by a holistic understanding of social change that is centrally concerned with creating mutually supportive relations between litigation and other tactics.

Moreover, CLX recognizes the complexity of the challenges posed by the climate crisis. Indeed, climate change is not one problem, but rather a bundle of interconnected problems that includes mitigation, adaptation, loss and damage, and climate finance. For that reason, the topical and regional scope of CLX’s work is broad and crosses traditional disciplinary lines.

Research
Legal Actions & Advocacy
Global Community of Practice
In the News
Webinars
People
César Rodríguez-Garavito
CHRGJ Chair and Faculty Director
Professor of Clinical Law
Jacqueline Gallant
Litigation Associate, Climate Litigation Accelerator
Melina De Bona 
Litigation Associate, Climate Litigation Accelerator
Carlos Andrés Baquero-Díaz
Research Assistant
Blogs and Publications
The Climate Fight Needs Imagination—Using the Tariff Act of 1930 to Fight Climate Change
Enough Symbolism, We Need Real Climate Action: Why We Shouldn’t Let Governments Hide Behind Symbolic Climate Emergency Declarations
The Taint of Slavery in the Brazilian Beef Industry
Fauna, Flora…and Funga: The Case for the Protection of Fungi Under National and International Law
Does Jair Bolsonaro commit crimes against humanity by devastating the Amazon rainforest?
Breaking Through the Climate Gridlock with Citizen Power
The (Science) Fiction of Human Rights
The Doughnut Approach: How to Climatize Human Rights
Litigating Inaction: The Case to Preserve Funding to Save the Amazon
The Eight-Year Decade That Will Determine the Fate of the Planet and Human Rights
Conflicting Rights and Competing Claims: Biodiversity in Latin America
From Barbuda to the World: Love (and Peace and Happiness) in the Time of Climate Emergency
News and Announcements
Announcements
April 11, 2022
Video Available for: Youth in Focus: Youth Activism’s Role in Pushing Climate Action Forward
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Press Coverage
March 25, 2022
Lessons on “Adaptation Litigation” from the Global South: What the Law Can, Can’t and Might Do to Help Us Cope with Climate Change
Verfassungsblog
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Announcements
March 10, 2022
Video Available for: Litigating Future Fossil Fuels: How a South African Case Prevented Fossil Fuel Exploration
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Previous Events
If you missed out on any of our events, then you can watch them below.
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