Law and Regulation
Law and regulation bring about widescale change at both national and international levels. The legal sector is still developing its approach to climate change; with most momentum stemming from civil society and a small, but growing, number of lawyers and activists.
We are a small but nimble funder in this area and support:
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- Early-stage organisations working on innovative, potentially catalytic interventions.
- Laying the groundwork for future legal interventions, such as commissioning legal opinions or research to hasten legal interventions.
A grantee we have supported under this focus area:
Global Legal Action Network (GLAN)
GLAN pursues innovative legal actions against states and other powerful actors involved with human rights violations.
It supported six young Portuguese people to bring a claim against 32 states at the European Court of Human Rights (“ECHR”) for failing to take urgent action on climate change. They argued that the lack of climate action by those states contravened their human rights. Whilst the court deemed the case inadmissible, the ECHR issued a landmark ruling in a case linked to theirs in which a group of Senior Swiss Women brought against Switzerland. In this case, the court found that the Swiss government’s inadequate action to rapidly cut emissions is a violation of human rights.