Bridging the Evidence Gap: A Dialogue between Climate Scientists & the Litigation community

An increasing number of climate change cases are filed each year, with more than 1,500 cases of climate litigation being brought forward by Plaintiffs since 1986. Despite the ruling that climate targets or progress toward those targets needed to be significantly improved in most of those cases, lawsuits that try to establish a causal link between a defendant’s emission and the impacts on plaintiffs tend to fail. This raises the questions: What is the evidence that is being used in climate litigation cases? How much of that evidence is climate science, and how have the courts interpreted it? Was the attribution science evidence not sufficient enough to overcome causation tests and why?

In order to explore the above questions and to overcome the hurdles to the success of climate-related lawsuits, we need better paths of communication between the legal and scientific communities. Join us at this panel discussion between climate scientists from Grantham Institute at Imperial College London and members of the climate litigation community to tackle the topic in more depth.