Litigating Climate Change in the Global South

While climate change litigation in developed countries of the ’Global North’ is a well-studied phenomenon (from its distinctive characteristics and the contribution it is making, to the implementation of international climate laws like the Paris Agreement), relatively few studies focus on climate case law emerging elsewhere.

Litigating Climate Change in the Global South sheds light on emerging and accelerating climate litigation in developing countries across the three regions of Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Asia and the Pacific. It is the first monograph-length work to provide a comprehensive assessment of this jurisprudence.

Amid growing scholarly and policy interest in climate change litigation and its impact on international climate governance, the book examines which Global South countries are seeing climate cases, what is driving these trends, the coalitions of actors involved, and the early impacts this litigation is having on global goals of climate mitigation and adaptation.

Jolene Lin, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore, Jacqueline Peel, Director, Melbourne Climate Futures and Professor of Law, Melbourne Law School, The University of Melbourne

Jolene Lin is Associate Professor of Law at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and Director of its Asia-Pacific Centre of Environmental Law. Jolene’s research focuses on climate change law. She has published in leading international journals including the European Yearbook of International Law and the American Journal of International Law. She is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Environmental Law (Oxford University Press) and Climate Law (Brill). Her publications include Governing Climate Change: Global Cities and Transnational Lawmaking (Cambridge University Press 2018) and Climate Change Litigation in the Asia Pacific (Cambridge University Press 2020). Jolene regularly conducts seminars and provides consultancy services to government agencies, judicial bodies, companies and non-governmental organizations.

Jacqueline Peel is Professor of Law at the Melbourne Law School and Director of the University of Melbourne’s multidisciplinary climate initiative, Melbourne Climate Futures. She is a world-leading expert in the fields of climate and environmental law, with numerous, seminal publications on these topics. She has served in key expert and advisory roles to policymakers, including as a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report (Working Group III, Mitigation), and as an international expert on the Forum on Trade, Environment and the SDGs (TESS) working group on Climate and Trade Measures. Her professional work has included research consultancies and evaluation projects undertaken for intergovernmental and non-governmental organisations such as the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (UK), the UN Environment Programme and the Secretariat for the Regional Programme for the Environment in the Pacific (SPREP).