Resumen de Climate Change Lawfare

Siri Gloppen, Asuncion Lera St.Clair

• Climate change poses unprecedented challenges. No one knows the suitability for human life in a planet three or four degrees warmer on average. But we know climate impacts are already changing socio-ecological systems and will lead to profound changes and conflicts over resources. This paper looks at how issues concerning the injustice and human rights violations caused by climate change are transformed and manifested in legal conflicts. Law is at the center of efforts by national, local and international actors - state and non-state - to transform and develop societies. We coin the term "climate change lawfare" to theorize about how emerging rights-related issues around climate change manifest themselves in legal strategies. Climate lawfare aims to capture the diverse strategies in which rights and legal institutions figure prominently, are adopted intentionally and used strategically with the aim of helping deliver or at least catalyze social transformation in relation to climate change. This includes both legal reform strategies and diverse forms of legal activism from �below�. This paper develops the concept of "climate change lawfare" and constructs a typology by systematizing emerging material on climate related legal conflicts. This may in turn provide a better starting point for systematic investigations into the conditions that place rights and courts at the center of such disputes, and of the effects and impacts of various legal strategies.