Causation in National and International Climate Change Litigation

This book presents a comprehensive analysis of causation in climate change litigation across a range of regional, national and international legal jurisdictions. By doing so, it offers clarity and potential solutions for legal professionals, scholars and courts navigating the complex legal terrain of climate change litigation.

Constructing causal chains in climate litigation poses significant difficulties for the judicial system. Factual challenges range from causal overdetermination to the vast spatial and temporal scale of climate-related cause-and-effect relationships. Normative obstacles are posed inter alia by the multitude of greenhouse-gas emitters and the wide range of climate-influencing practices.

Drawing on diverse understandings of causation from various legal perspectives, as well as from other disciplines such as computer science, metaphysics and philosophy, this book provides a fundamental understanding of climatic causation in law. Further, it lays the groundwork and clarifies the requirements for the use and development of continuous causal chains in climate change litigation.