Providing an insightful contribution to literature on the topic, this book scrutinises how international courts and tribunals may respond procedurally to an ever-growing list of environmental disputes. In a time of environmental crisis, it lays crucial groundwork for strengthening the application of international environmental law, a topic of increasing relevance for global civil society.

"As the climate crisis intensifies and becomes acutely visible, promising responses have been developed by scientists, advocates, and scholars around the world. Mobilizations such as #FridaysforFuture and Extinction Rebellion are converging with Indigenous peoples' movements and other social justice movements to convey the urgency and the scale needed for climate action. Reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, informed by developments in attribution science, establish more precise links between greenhouse gas emissions, extreme weather events, and human impacts. In the meantime, collaborations between scientists and journalists have drawn the broader public's attention to detailed information about the magnitude of planet-warming emissions associated with the activities of major fossil fuel companies"--

The scope of what qualifies as environmental litigation is huge, while at the same time, this area is growing rapidly as a result of evolving issues such as climate change litigation. The authors examine the most critical issues in specialized litigation, including global climate change, litigating government enforcement matters in both the civil and criminal context, citizen-suit actions, toxic tort and pesticide litigation, natural resources damages claims, and insurance as a source of recovery.

This ground-breaking volume provides analyses from experts around the globe on the part played by national and international law, through legislation and the courts, in advancing efforts to tackle climate change, and what needs to be done in the future. Published under the auspices of the British Institute of International and Comparative Law (BIICL), the volume builds on an event convened at BIICL, which brought together academics, legal practitioners and NGO representatives. The volume offers not only the insights from that event, but also additional materials, sollicited to offer the reader a more complete picture of how climate change litigation is evolving in a global perspective, highlighting both opportunities, and constraints.

This book is the result of doctoral studies that I started in October 2004. At the outset, I only knew that I wanted to work on interest groups and litigation in the context of the European Union. At that time, I would not have believed that I would find myself some time later touring half Western Europe to interview environmental organisations, nor that I would read French, German and Dutch court rulings on the protection of endangered species whose names were completely unknown to me. Yet I never regretted my choice of topic, and hopefully the following chapters will convince the reader that it is indeed a topic that merits our attention. I would not have been able to cope with all the pitfalls of a long research project without the strong and enduring support of my friends and colleagues. Both personally and academically, I have profited enormously from my three years as a doctoral student at the department of political science at the Institute for Advanced Studies (Institut für Höhere Studien) in Vienna, Austria. I am very much indebted to Gerda Falkner, Oliver Treib, Sylvia Kritzinger and Irina Michalowitz for organising such a great programme which allowed me and my colleagues to engage in intensive discussions with outstanding academic scholars such as Alec Stone-Sweet, Paul Pierson, James Caporaso, Frank Schimmelfennig, Klaus Goetz, Andrea Lenschow, Katharina Holzinger and Hellen Wallace.