Climate activists are increasingly going to court against energy groups. In a momentous and controversial judgment, a Dutch court ordered the energy group Shell to reduce its CO2 emissions. Tens of thousands of residents of the Niger Delta have also sued Shell in Great Britain. In Germany, a lawsuit is pending before the Higher Regional Court of Hamm, brought by a Peruvian farmer who demands that the energy group RWE compensate him for the threat that a melting glacier poses to his house in the Andes.

In an interview, Marc-Philippe Weller, Director of the Institute for Comparative Law, Conflict of Laws and International Business Law at the University of Heidelberg, analyses these and other climate actions. He concludes that model cases fulfil an important sensitising function but that only politics can provide a comprehensive solution.

Read the entire interview here in PDF format.