‘Green lawfare’ under threat as campaigners face legal backlash

Victory didn’t hit home for Elisabeth Stern right away. Swarmed by journalists and jubilant campaigners on the steps of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, she was simply moving with the crowd. “In the moment, I never have the feelings that one should have,” she says. “It always comes later.” 

It would take some time to fully absorb the facts: she and her fellow plaintiffs, Swiss organisation KlimaSeniorinnen (Senior Women for Climate Protection), had just won one of the most significant climate rulings in legal history. In an international first, the court found that the Swiss government had violated the human rights of these retirement age women by failing to act on the climate crisis.

Stern, 77, watched the effects of this ripple around the world since it was ruled in April 2024. “Six months ago, there were 12 concrete cases that referenced our judgment,” she says. “How many must there be now?” The KlimaSeniorinnen case was a landmark, but not an outlier. The courtroom has emerged as a key front in the fight for climate justice as plaintiffs seek to hold governments and corporations to account for failing to protect the environment.

According to a report from the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, over 230 new climate-related cases were filed in 2023 alone, bringing the total to over 2,500 worldwide. These cases range from human rights-based claims like Stern’s, to legal challenges against greenwashing where companies are accused of misrepresenting their environmental efforts. 

Climate litigation offers a way for advocates to demand accountability where politics has failed, but some of the most high-profile climate wins have now been overturned on appeal. Lawyers have faced aggressive legal retaliation from large corporations, and critics warn that courtroom drama may obscure deeper structural problems within the environmental movement. What was once hailed as a breakthrough strategy is now being re-evaluated.

“There’s this fantasy that law has been used in some systemic way to limit power,” says environmental historian Jason W Moore. “It’s absolutely one hundred per cent untrue.” Moore is among those arguing that climate lawfare reflects the dominance of the “eco-industrial complex” – a professional class of NGOs, lawyers, and academics that he believes has substituted grassroots environmentalism with a bureaucratic approach. “What’s missing is a political strategy around litigation: one that connects it to mass mobilisation and democratic pressure,” he adds.

Landmark victories can indeed unravel. In 2024, a Dutch court of appeals overturned a ruling that ordered oil giant Shell to slash global carbon emissions by 45 per cent. Just three years earlier, environmentalists had celebrated the original verdict as a turning point, inspiring copycat cases, and sending shudders through boardrooms.

The legal structures that are being used to advance climate justice are also being weaponised to suppress it

Jason W. Moore

While the court upheld that Shell owed a “duty of care” to help prevent further damage to the climate, it concluded that the company was not legally required to meet its own environmental targets. The appeal judges found that Dutch courts lacked the authority to impose such obligations on a global company, dealing a blow to campaigners who had hoped for a comprehensive victory.

Then there’s the case of American lawyer Steven Donziger. In 2011, his team secured $9.5bn (£7bn) in damages from Chevron on behalf of Indigenous communities affected by pollution in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Donziger was later disbarred, subjected to a barrage of lawsuits by the oil and gas company, and charged with contempt of court. He was placed under house arrest in New York for nearly 1,000 days, and subsequently convicted before his eventual release in 2022.

The initial ruling was also overturned by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague. Human-rights groups and supporters have described Donziger’s persecution as corporate retaliation – an abuse of the legal system that demonstrates the risks faced by those who challenge powerful fossil fuel interests. Chevron labelled the accusation an “international smear campaign.”

According to the Grantham Research Institute, the number of corporate counterattacks against climate litigation is steadily increasing. “The legal structures that are being used to advance climate justice,” Moore says, “are also being weaponised to suppress it.” 

Still, others insist that the courtroom remains a key environmental battleground. Meredith Warren, a researcher at Queen Mary University of London, acknowledges its flaws but argues litigation still has a place: “It is a broken tool, but I also think there are a lot of really amazing, dedicated activists who are trying to bring about change within the legal system that we have.”

I’m not stupid. I can see what’s happening

Elisabeth Stern

For Warren, the long-term power of climate litigation may lie less in setting legal precedent than in shaping how the climate crisis is understood and talked about. “Butterfly adjudication”, she explains, describes how even modest cases can have outsized repercussions – shaping public discourse, inspiring future lawsuits, and reframing climate protection as a human right. 

“Each case’s value can be understood in terms of its public visibility and the ability of claimants and litigants to be platformed and tell their story.” In that sense, even overturned rulings or partial victories may serve a strategic purpose to set new expectations in legal culture, and public opinion. 

For Elisabeth Stern and KlimaSeniorinnen, the reprisals have been swift. Swiss politicians denounced the judgment, newspapers ran hostile headlines, and Stern and her fellow campaigners were accused of tarnishing the nation’s reputation. “Within Switzerland, it’s a strong wind against us,” she says.

Still, Stern remains composed. “I’m the kind who sees the glass half full,” she says.  “At the same time, I’m not stupid. I can see what’s happening.” 

If climate litigation has a future, it may look like this: imperfect, hard-won, and fiercely contested. Its victories may be fragile, its setbacks frequent. But for now, its advocates believe it remains one of the few spaces where the powerful can be held to account and where, at least occasionally, justice can be served.