Lawsuits against climate action on the rise

PARIS, June 25 (AFP): Legal efforts to block or unwind action on climate change are rising across the globe, new research showed Thursday, particularly in the United States which leads the world on anti-green litigation.

This trend was expected to intensify as the White House took "an increasingly aggressive stance" against environmental regulations, said the authors of the world's largest analysis of climate litigation.

As in previous years, most new cases in 2024 were filed by non-governmental organisations or individuals using litigation to advance broader climate aims, such as opposing fossil fuel projects.

But litigation was "increasingly used not only to advance climate goals but also to resist or reshape them", said the report by the Grantham Research Institute at the London School of Economics.

Sixty of the 226 cases filed in 2024 -- about 27 percent-involved an argument not aligned with climate goals, said associate professor Joana Setzer, one of the authors.

This was a rise on 2023, when about one in five fell into this category, she said. This reflected a growing political polarisation around climate action, she said, particularly in the United States where most of these cases occurred.