Climate Litigation Accelerator

Toolkit

CLX, based at NYU Law's Earth Rights Advocacy Clinic, is a global collaborative hub that catalyzes legal strategies, tools, and ideas needed to secure urgent and ambitious climate action.

Recent highlights

Publications

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CLX Director and Founder César Rodríguez-Garavito was featured in a recent Knowable Magazine article on the promises and challenges of litigation as a tool to secure action on climate change.

To read the full article, “The challenges and promises of climate lawsuits,” please visit the Knowable Magazine site here.

Ayisha Time Magazine 2

by NYU Law

Ayisha Siddiqa, a human rights and environmental justice activist and a youth fellow with the Law School’s Climate Litigation Accelerator (CLX), was named one of Time magazine’s 2023 Women of the Year on March 2.

Read more here

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by César Rodríguez Garavito

If human rights are to remain relevant in the Anthropocene, budding theoretical, doctrinal, and advocacy efforts from within the field to address the climate emergency need to be deepened and expanded.

Read more here

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by CLX & Forensic Architecture

We invite you to explore and share the results of an investigation carried out with Forensic Architecture on land use in the Amazon Forest. Using FA’s cutting-edge architectural techniques and satellite technology, the investigation sheds light on the impact of government policies and narratives on land practices, human rights, and climate change as well as increases our partners’ access to innovative cutting-edge tools for climate action. As such, this first investigation established the correlation between policies adopted by the Bolsonaro administration, violent attacks against Yanomami villages, and environmental destruction. It particularly brought to light patterns of destruction and threats on Yanomami territory along the Uraricoera River due to gold mining.

Litigating the Climate Emergency Book Cover pdf

by César Rodríguez-Garavito (ed.)

The Climate Litigation Accelerator has published Litigating the Climate Emergency: How Human Rights, Courts, and Legal Mobilization Can Bolster Climate Action, which documents the rise of human rights and climate change (HRCC) litigation around the world. It includes contributions from leading litigators, advocates, researchers, and practitioners from the Global South and North, comprising a rich and interdisciplinary text. If you’re interested in learning more about rights-based climate litigation, this book is the place to go!

The book is open access and available in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.

Court

by CLX, Christina Voigt, & CHRGJ

CLX – in collaboration with Professor Christina Voigt and the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice – submitted an intervention in the Swiss Senior Women v. Switzerland case currently before the European Court of Human Rights. In this intervention, they examined the court precedent that demonstrates that the elderly can rightfully be considered victims of climate change even though global warming has at least some effects on everyone. They also explained how certain provisions of the Paris Agreement interact with countries’ human rights obligations such that developed countries must act swiftly to bring emissions to net zero.

Highlights

Videos

The Climate Cost of Big Ag and Big Food
Historically, climate change has primarily been framed as a problem driven by fossil fuels. While that is true, this framing misses the substantial role that food and agriculture play in fueling the climate emergency, in particular the production and consumption of animal products. This webinar addresses this gap by examining the interplay between animal agriculture and climate change, underscoring the need to address industrial animal agriculture both because of the egregious ethical violations against animals as well as the climate implications of this industry.