Enforcing carbon majors’ liability for climate change: a comparative study of tort law based climate litigation in the Netherlands and Spain

Portela Giráldez, Ignacio

Enforcing carbon majors’ liability for climate change: a comparative study of tort law based climate litigation in the Netherlands and Spain

Citation

Portela Giráldez, I. Enforcing carbon majors’ liability for climate change: a comparative study of tort law based climate litigation in the Netherlands and Spain. 2022. handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10230/54865

This citation was generated automatically.

Abstract

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.

Description

Treball guanyador del primer premi del 2022 del Premi Càtedra UNESCO ESCI-UPF i Barcelona School of Management - UPF als millors treballs de fi de màster (TFM) sobre temes de Benestar Planetari.
Treball de Fi de Màster: Master in European and Global Law. Curs 2021-2022
Tutor: Ángel José Rodrigo Hernández (UPF)
Co-tutor: Bruno de Witte (University Maastricht)