Carbon Majors are the main global contributors to climate change, and yet, seldom have their environmental liability been enforced by the Judiciary. The lack of specific legal provisions regarding climate change has hindered any progress in this regard. The Hague District Court ruled in the Milieudefensie case, based on tort law, that Royal Dutch Shell had breached its Duty of Care and human rights obligations towards Dutch citizens, as it had failed to curb Greenhouse Gas emissions. The Court assessed ...
Carbon Majors are the main global contributors to climate change, and yet, seldom have their environmental liability been enforced by the Judiciary. The lack of specific legal provisions regarding climate change has hindered any progress in this regard. The Hague District Court ruled in the Milieudefensie case, based on tort law, that Royal Dutch Shell had breached its Duty of Care and human rights obligations towards Dutch citizens, as it had failed to curb Greenhouse Gas emissions. The Court assessed the scope and extent of this duty, also known as the Standard of Care, according to the international commitments of the Netherlands. This Standard of Care acts as an ‘open-ended norm’ that introduces international and soft-law instruments into any legal system, and as such, has the potential to be replicated in other legal systems that allow such ‘open-ended norm’. This research aims to provide that a similar ruling could be replicated in Spain against a Carbon Major, following the legal findings and guidelines of Milieudefensie.
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