Tortious Liability for Climate Change Inaction: Recent Trends across Jurisdictions

European Energy and Environmental Law Review. 2026. Vol. 35. No. 2. P. 75–92.

Rovnov Y.

The article tracks a change of approach taken by national courts within and across legal systems to assessing climate actions in tort. The polycentric nature of climate policy, which had proven fatal to plaintiffs’ earlier cases in common law jurisdictions, has rarely struck judges in continental Europe as a particularly effective defence. Nonetheless, to civil courts, too, the difficulties of linking individual harm to a specific greenhouse gas (GHG) emitter have until recently made the adverse effects of climate change appear conceptually inapt for redress by means of tortious liability. This seems to be changing. If last year’s judgment by the Higher Regional Court of Hamm in Lliuya v. RWE, explicitly admitting the possibility of a successful tortious claim, may have been seen as an isolated artefact (especially against the background of the Federal Court of Justice’s recent orders in BMW and Mercedes-Benz cases), the order by the Supreme Court of New Zealand in 2024 and that by the Cantonal Court of Zug in December 2025 to admit climate-related tort claims to trial suggest an emerging pattern. Its most ‘salient feature’, to use a term from Australian tort jurisprudence, is the courts’ willingness to adopt a variant of the material contribution or material increase in risk tests for establishing causation – which, however, does not guarantee plaintiffs success.

Keywords: изменение климата, causation, внедоговорная ответственность, негаторный иск, negligence, climate liability, Lliuya, RWE, климатическая ответственность, деликтный иск, tort claims, nuisance, Holcim, Shell, Fonterra

Publication based on the results of: International protection of economic rights in the context of sanctions (2025)