PERILS AND POSSIBILITIES CLIMATE ACTIVISM AND LAW

Course Objectives:

Students will critically engage with the concept of justice in relation to environment and climate. By doing that the course will present students the differentiated impacts of environmental challenges and look into the ways communities make this differentiation visible by engaging the law. They will analyze the distribution and recognition aspects of environmental justice and will learn about different process of environmental claim making. The students will question the potentials and limits of law in bringing up social change especially in a context like climate change which emerges as a result of the actions of multiple human actors and environmental processes.

Course Content:

Climate change is everywhere. Everybody is talking about climate change. But there are one group of actors who take action against climate change through the courts framing failure to abide by climate change agreements as an issue of legal liability. Their actions not only have the potential to bring about change in environmental regulations but also in public awareness by enhancing a public dialogue around climate change. New climate litigation cases emerge globally in the United States, the Netherlands, Pakistan, and the Philippines. In this context this course is asking following question: What is climate change litigation? Who are the actors involved in this practice? What kind of justice frameworks are involved in it? What are the limits and potentials of climate litigation? How do different stakeholders receive the decisions of courts? Thus, this course will particularly focus on climate litigation which emerges as a prominent new route for climate activism since the Paris Agreement and the Urgenda case.