Environmental Law Commons^™

“Small” Voices, Big Wins: Analyzing Remedies In Children’S Climate Cases, Maria Antonia Tigre

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

Children’s climate litigation has emerged as a powerful tool to address the climate crisis, with young plaintiffs around the world taking governments and corporations to court to demand climate action. This Article examines successful cases — those in which relief sought by the applicants was fully or partially granted — across five continents, providing an “around the world” perspective on the evolution and impact of youth-led climate litigation. Focusing on landmark cases in Australia, Colombia, South Africa, South Korea, and the United States, this analysis highlights the arguments presented by young plaintiffs and the judicial reasoning that supported the relief …

The Behavioral Effects Of Corporate Ghg Emissions Disclosures, Cynthia Hanawalt, Andy Fitch

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

In recent years, roughly 30 nations have implemented regulatory regimes that mandate some type of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions disclosure from corporations. As GHG emissions disclosure regimes continue to take hold, several key questions arise: will they prompt meaningful and sustained reductions, or will they merely serve to document corporations’ unabated emissions? And if these regimes do lead to lasting emissions reductions, precisely what causes the changes in companies’ behavior? These questions are particularly relevant as climate advocates grapple with the merits of disclosure as a tool for real emissions impact, and as policymakers refine disclosure requirements to best fit …

Climate Litigation Report 2025 — Climate Change In The Courtroom: Trends, Impacts And Emerging Lessons, Maria Antonia Tigre, Margaret Barry

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

The Climate Litigation Report 2025 updates previous United Nations Environment Programme reports published in 2017, 2020, and 2023. It provides judges, lawyers, advocates, policy makers, researchers, environmental defenders (including child and women defenders), NGOs, businesses, and the international community with an essential resource to understand the current state of global climate litigation. The report includes descriptions of the key trends in climate litigation and the most important issues that courts have faced in the course of climate change cases.

Getting To Court Is The Hard Part, Michael B. Gerrard, Jessica A. Wentz

Faculty Scholarship

The article by Quilcaille and colleagues makes a convincing case that heatwaves around the world have been worsened by the combustion of fossil fuels produced mostly by a limited number of companies. This is the latest in a series of climate-attribution studies5 that are demonstrating — with increasing precision — the link between greenhouse-gas emissions and climate impacts.

Trump Epa’S Proposed Revocation Of Greenhouse Gas Endangerment Finding Raises Tangle Of Legal Issues, Michael B. Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

On July 29, 2025, at an auto dealership in Indiana, Lee Zeldin, Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), announced a proposal to withdraw the Endangerment Finding for greenhouse gases (GHGs), which has been EPA’s legal basis for using the Clean Air Act to fight climate change. This action, which will surely be fought in court once it becomes final, raises a host of legal issues. This article discusses the legal basis for and significance of the Endangerment Finding; Zeldin’s principal arguments for revoking it, and challenges that will be raised to them; the range of possible outcomes in …

International Legal Guidelines For Marine Carbon Dioxide Removal Governance Under The London Convention And London Protocol, Korey Silverman-Roati, Romany M. Webb

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

For the past two decades, parties to the London Convention and Protocol have negotiated rules, decisions, and amendments related to climate change. These efforts have principally focused on two sets of technologies – sub-seabed carbon dioxide storage and marine geoengineering. Initial discussions regarding marine geoengineering focused specifically on ocean fertilization but, more recently, the parties have considered an expanded array of marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR) approaches, including ocean alkalinity enhancement and ocean sinking of biomass. Throughout these discussions, the parties have invoked legal principles and guidelines, like the precautionary approach, to inform their assessment of how to apply the …

Methane Removal Under The Paris Agreement, Romany M. Webb

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

In the 2015 Paris Agreement, the international community agreed to “strengthen the global response to climate change” by limiting the “increase in global average temperatures to well below" 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and ideally to 1.5 degrees Celsius. As recognized in the Agreement, to stay within these limits, global greenhouse gas emissions must be rapidly reduced, “so as to achieve a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases in the second half of this century” — a situation commonly described as “net zero.” The need to reach net zero has prompted growing …

Varied Legal Parameters Shape Fiduciaries’ Ability To Act On Climate Risk, Cynthia Hanawalt, Andy Fitch

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

Commentators who advocate either for or against corporate and asset managers addressing climate risks often refer to “fiduciary duty” as justification for their claims. Yet no field of corporate or asset management actually imposes one standalone fiduciary duty. Nor do any two business-law fields impose the same fiduciary regime. Instead, these fields adopt differing arrays of fiduciary duties to address various types of relationships, comprising a different blend of affirmative obligations and/or prohibitions, assessed with different degrees of strictness by enforcers and courts. As a result, overgeneralizations about fiduciaries’ duty in all business-law contexts tend to further obscure what a …

Sabin Center For Climate Change Law Annual Report 2024-2025, Tiffany Challe

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

This 2024-2025 annual report highlights the Sabin Center’s breadth and impact across our program areas, including climate litigation, carbon management and negative emissions technologies, US climate policy, energy transition, climate law and finance.

Annual Review Of Seqra Cases And Developments, Michael B. Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

The New York State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA) turns 50 this year. The statute has changed only a little in the last half century, but it continues to be a font of litigation. The courts decided 43 cases under SEQRA in 2024.

Implementation of SEQRA is also raising policy issues. The legislature is considering whether to amend SEQRA to speed up affordable housing projects, and the State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) is drafting regulations concerning the role SEQRA should play in advancing environmental justice.

A constant theme is the tension between thoroughly studying important project impacts and involving …

Decommissioning Offshore Oil And Gas Infrastructure: Report Of Proceedings, May 2, 2025 Offshore Decommissioning Workshop, Martin Lockman, Ashwin Murthy, Romany M. Webb

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

On May 2, 2025, Ocean Conservancy and the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law organized a workshop at Columbia Law School on offshore oil and gas decommissioning in the United States. The overarching goal of the workshop was to bring together offshore law and policy experts to outline a research and policy agenda for offshore decommissioning. Within this broad goal, we sought to (1) identify key opportunities to reform offshore decommissioning law in the United States, both in the short term and over the next decade, (2) identify knowledge gaps and highlight areas for future research, and (3) begin to …

Opposition To Renewable Energy Facilities In The United States: June 2025 Edition, Matthew Eisenson, Jacob Elkin, Ivonne Norman, Rebecca Coombs, Chadol Kim, Rex Koenig, Suzan Michalski, Eric Quiroz, Josepi Scariano, Ava Teasdale, Victor Tong, Annabel Williams

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

Increasing the amount of electricity generated in the United States to power electric vehicles, data centers, and other end uses, while simultaneously reducing greenhouse gas emissions will require deploying a massive number of renewable energy facilities at an unprecedented scale and pace. Although many renewable energy facilities are sited without a problem, local opposition often arises. The Sabin Center’s annual report, Opposition to Renewable Energy Facilities in the United States, documents legal obstacles and challenges that arise during the siting process. In particular, the report focuses on: (a) state laws and local ordinances (“restrictions”) that impede the siting and deployment …

Igniting Action To Reduce Gas Flaring: Real Opportunities. Real Projects. Real Results., Andrew Bernstein, Mark Davis, Thomas Mitro, Perrine Toledano

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment

Gas flaring is a major global challenge. Despite bold commitments from governments, national oil companies (NOCs), international oil companies (IOCs), and leading independents, global flaring levels have stagnated at around 140–150 BCM per year, emitting up to 1 billion tonnes of CO2-equivalent greenhouse gases annually, while representing as much as $30 billion per year in potential lost revenue.

Numerous studies have outlined how flared gas can be captured and monetized – through power generation, fertilizers, petrochemicals, LNG and pipeline exports, among other use cases. Substantial reductions in flaring are not only technically achievable but can often create significant commercial value …

The Role Of Advisory Opinions In International Law In The Context Of The Climate Crisis, Maria Antonia Tigre, Armando Rocha

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

Between December 2022 and March 2023, three requests for an advisory opinion were submitted to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR), and the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Furthermore, a request for an advisory opinion from the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (AfCtHPR) is being prepared. As such, 2024–2025 marks an unprecedented moment in global climate litigation: as of November 2024, we are on the verge of having four of the world’s most important international and regional courts and tribunals answering crucial legal questions on the (ex …

Legacy Liabilities For Oil And Gas Wells Under The Mineral Leasing Act, Martin Lockman, Ashwin Murthy, Romany M. Webb

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

The federal government is the largest landowner in the United States. The bulk of federal land is controlled by the Bureau of Land Management (“BLM”), an agency within the Department of the Interior (“DOI”) that manages more than 245 million acres or approximately 10% of the land in the United States. Below the ground, BLM’s authority reaches even further. In total, BLM controls around 700 million acres of minerals — 30% of the onshore mineral resources in the United States, spanning an area larger than Argentina. The enormous scale of oil and gas production on federal land has created a …

Regulation Of Sargassum Removal And Sinking In Florida, Ashwin Murthy, Korey Silverman-Roati, Romany M. Webb

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

Carbon dioxide removal is increasingly recognized as a necessary component of global climate mitigation efforts. One emerging method involves the deep-sea sinking of plant biomass to sequester carbon. Sargassum, a free-floating brown seaweed, has been identified as a promising candidate for this approach due to its natural buoyancy and decomposition process, which enables it to sink and potentially store carbon in the deep ocean. With sargassum blooms growing dramatically in the Atlantic since 2011 — posing ecological, economic, and public health risks when they wash ashore — there is growing interest in offshore removal and sinking as a climate solution. …

Trump Attacks On Climate Science May Violate Numerous Federal Laws, Michael B. Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

Starting on its first day on January 20, 2025, the second Trump administration has launched an unprecedented rollback of efforts to fight climate change. The Sabin Center for Climate Change Law’s Climate Backtracker already has 117 items.

Much of this is aimed at scientific research on climate change, or has the effect of inhibiting the conduct and dissemination of this research. Many of these actions may also violate federal laws.

This article discusses these actions, some of their legal implications, and the litigation challenges that have already been brought. It begins with actions that are specifically aimed at climate research, …

The Cost Of Capital: Lowering The Cost Of Capital For Climate And Sdg Finance In Emerging Markets And Developing Economies (Emdes), Jeffrey D. Sachs, Lisa E. Sachs, Ana M. Camelo Vega, Bradford M. Willis

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment

Today, some of the world's fastest-growing economies face some of the highest borrowing costs – even for clean energy and development projects with strong fundamentals. This is not a function of global capital scarcity. Trillions are available. The problem lies in systemic barriers that prevent capital from flowing to where it’s most urgently needed. The high cost of capital in EMDEs not only undermines critical financing for the energy transition and sustainable development; it also limits the ability for US- and EU-based financial institutions to invest in and finance projects in EMDEs, despite institutional and stakeholder appetite and interest for …

Seaweed Cultivation And Sinking For Carbon Dioxide Removal In Alaska, Ashwin Murthy, Korey Silverman-Roati, Romany M. Webb

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

Meeting global climate change goals requires a rapid and dramatic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. That will not be sufficient by itself, however. It will also be necessary to remove carbon dioxide, and potentially other greenhouse gases, from the atmosphere. One proposed approach involves the cultivation and sinking of seaweed.

Alaska’s coastal waters, rich in nutrients, provide ideal conditions for seaweed cultivation projects. Moreover, Alaska’s coastal waters are more vulnerable to acidification than those in lower latitudes, making aquaculture particularly beneficial in this region. Alaska has made active efforts to streamline the permitting of seaweed cultivation, encouraging research projects in …

Wildfire Smoke And U.S. Law, Michael B. Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

Many of the most wicked feedback effects of climate change relate to wildfire smoke. In some places the greenhouse gases poured into the atmosphere by wildfires exceed the reductions achieved by all efforts to fight climate change. At the same time, climate change is a major reason why wildfires are becoming more frequent and intense. Climate change and wildfires feed each other. However, environmental law and climate policy have paid relatively little attention to wildfires. The smoke from these fires — a major cause of illness and death, even thousands of miles from the blazes — is mostly unregulated. Efforts …

Time For States To Flex Their Legal Muscles, Michael B. Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

In these dark several years ahead, with all three branches of the federal government moving backwards on environmental protection, the states can do much to stem the retreat.

Liability Considerations For Marine Carbon Dioxide Removal Projects In U.S. Waters, Korey Silverman-Roati, Martin Lockman, Romany M. Webb

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

Scientists have identified a number of land- and ocean-based carbon dioxide removal (“CDR”) approaches. Ocean-based approaches, also known as marine CDR, hold great potential for uptake and sequestration of carbon dioxide. However, controlled field trials in the ocean are needed to better understand the efficacy and impacts of several marine CDR approaches. Legal considerations will have a major bearing on whether, when, where, and how such field research goes forward. Previous studies have analyzed the potential international and domestic legal framework applicable to marine CDR research and subsequent deployment (if that is ultimately deemed appropriate). However, relatively little research has …

Conference Report: Attribution Science And Climate Law, Jessica A. Wentz

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

This report provides a summary of proceedings from the Attribution Science and Climate Law conference hosted at Columbia University on January 9-10, 2025. The conference brought together a diverse group of researchers and practitioners to share insights on the status of climate change attribution research and its relevance to climate law and policy. Participants included physical scientists, public health researchers, economists, social scientists, legal scholars, and legal practitioners. The core goals of the event were to facilitate interdisciplinary discussion, advance substantive knowledge in this field, and promote ongoing collaboration between the scientific, legal, and policy-making communities.

Climate Change Litigation In New York, Michael B. Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

Numerous lawsuits have been brought in the federal and state courts in New York concerning climate change. Some were under two important state statutes on the subject – the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act of 2019 (CLCPA)and New York Climate Superfund Act of 2024. Others are brought under various common law, consumer protection, securities, and other theories. This column describes the most important of these cases.

The Role Of Marine Co2 Removal In Combating Climate Change, Sarah Vican, Meghan Gavin, Wil Burns, Douglas Edwards, Romany M. Webb

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

Combating climate change requires not only rapid reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, but also removal of significant amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere. CO2 removal (CDR) comes in many different forms, but climate scientists and policymakers are focusing on the potentially important role of large-scale use of emerging ocean-based techniques, often referred to as marine CDR (mCDR). In the United States, mCDR in domestic waters is governed by a patchwork of laws and regulations. There are also major uncertainties concerning regulation of mCDR in the open ocean, where international treaty regimes have struggled to develop coherent rules. On …

Managing The Trade-Climate Policy Interface Through Open Plurilateral Agreements: Learning From The Eu Deforestation Regulation Experience, Bernard M. Hoekman, Charles F. Sabel

Faculty Scholarship

Trade policies motivated by security or commercial interests are increasingly complemented by trade measures that seek to induce foreign producers to green their production processes. A prominent example is the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR). Such unilateral measures are unlikely to be efficient, and at the limit may simply be ineffective. In this paper we use the EUDR experience to make the case for countries seeking to use trade policies to negotiate jointly defined approaches to achieve nontrade goals. We consider the scope for doing so in the framework of trade agreements and through stand-alone, issue-specific open plurilateral agreements (OPAs). We …

The Need To Explore The Potential Of Marine Cdr With A One-Earth Strategy: A Guide For Policy-Makers, Philip W. Boyd, Jean-Pierre Gattuso, Minhan Dai, Louis Legendre, Terre Satterfield, Romany M. Webb

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

Rapid, deep and sustained reductions in carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions are essential to achieve the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement of keeping the long-term global average surface temperature increase well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5°C . In addition, the 2021 IPCC Report explains that carbon dioxide removal (CDR) will be needed to offset residual CO₂ emissions from activities and sectors that are difficult to decarbonize by 2050. The objective of CDR is removal of atmospheric CO2 from residual emissions and its durable storage in reservoirs, which is an additional critical element …

Regulation Of Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement In Washington State, Ashwin Murthy, Korey Silverman-Roati, Romany M. Webb

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

This paper focuses on one commonly-discussed ocean carbon dioxide removal approach, ocean alkalinity enhancement (“OAE”), which involves adding alkaline substances to ocean waters in order to increase their ability to uptake carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. OAE also has the potential to mitigate ocean acidification, which has been worsening globally due to climate change, and has threatened marine life and industries in places like Washington State.

There is significant interest in pursuing OAE off the coast of Washington state. This paper examines the legal framework for OAE projects in Washington State. As we explain, OAE projects conducted in near-shore areas …

Distinguishing Among Climate Change-Related Risks, Lisa E. Sachs, Denise Hearn, Matt Goldklang, Perrine Toledano

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment

Understanding the diverse types of climate change-related risks is crucial for developing effective strategies to address the global climate crisis. A holistic yet disaggregated approach allows for a comprehensive view of the challenges while enabling targeted responses from various stakeholders. This document outlines three main categories of climate-related risks: planetary, economic, and financial, detailing their relevance to various stakeholders, timeframes, and potential response strategies.

This short brief aims to disentangle the complex nature of risk discussions for productive discourse and appropriate risk management approaches for different stakeholders. In practice, discussions related to assessing and responding to climate change risk have …

The Bugbear Of Indigenous Commercial Fishing Rights On The Eastern Frontiers Of Australia And The United States, Teresa Singh

LL.M. Essays & Theses

Restrictions on the commercial exercise of Indigenous fishing rights are plentiful across the U.S. and Australia. They have particular force and prevalence for Indigenous communities residing in the sites of the first colonies in both nations. This note exposes the common history underlying the diminished rights in these regions and argues the situation amounts to a critical environmental injustice. It follows that environmental justice advocates and scholars should embrace and advance the more encompassing iteration of Indigenous fishing rights urged by this note and support their restoration as a form of corrective justice for these communities.