The number of new climate change-related lawsuits dipped a bit around the world last year, but accusations of “climate laundering” against companies are on the rise, according to a landmark study released THURSDAY.
The Grantham Institute for Climate Change and Environmental Research has a total of 2,341 climate-related legal proceedings around the world, including 190 new ones in the last twelve months (June 2022 to May 2023).
The number of new files could be “slowing down” after a peak registered in 2021 but “its diversity continues to increase,” say specialists from the British institute.
As a sign of this diversification, in the last twelve months new businesses have been identified in seven new countries: Bulgaria, China, Finland, Romania, Russia, Thailand and Turkey.
“An Explosion of Files”
The cases are very varied in nature: they can come from individuals or NGOs, go to the government, a company or an entity such as FIFA. They can address the lack of climate ambition, its implementation by the State that is considered to be failing, or even an insufficient consideration of the risk or they can even seek financial compensation…
The report points to a basic trend: the rise in recent years of legal action against companies accused of misleading promises or failing to implement promised climate efforts: “climate laundering.” There were 26 in 2022 and 27 in 2021, compared to just 9 in 2020 and 6 in 2019.
“Cases involving disinformation or misinformation about climate change are far from new,” observe the report’s authors, Joana Setzer and Kate Higham, quoted in a press release.
“But in recent years there has been an explosion of ‘climate laundering’ cases coming before the courts or administrative entities such as consumer protection agencies,” they observe.
Source: BFM TV
