Climate Litigation, Politics and Policy Change: Lessons from Urgenda and Climate Case Ireland

Concerned citizens and civil society organisations are increasingly turning to the courts to seek legal clarifications, remedies and enforcement of countries’ legal obligations in relation to climate change. Focusing on the policy dimensions of climate litigation, this chapter will provide an in-depth analysis of the current archetype of climate litigation—the Dutch Urgenda case, as well as Irish counterpart, Climate Case Ireland. While the two have had different outcomes to date, in both cases climate litigation has proven to be an important tool to push climate change into a central position not only in the legal sphere but also in political and policy discourse. To analyse the full impact of a climate litigation action, we argue that it is important to look not only at legal outcomes but also at the way in which the litigation effort as such shapes political discourse and the policy agenda