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SUSTAINABILITY AT SOMERVILLE
Lawyers for Life A legal view on the climate crisis On Saturday 12th June, some of Somerville’s finest sustainability experts and academic minds came together for our Climate Change Symposium. During the event’s second panel, lawyers Farhana Yamin (1982, PPE) and Clare Hatcher (1974, History) shared their views on the trials and tribulations of addressing the climate crisis through the law, informed by their decades of experience. Here we share two abridged excerpts.
‘Lawyers can be a force for good’ Clare Hatcher, Consultant at Clyde and Co. and Vice President of the CLLS Energy Committee David Miller has described lawyers as like rhinoceroses: “thick-skinned, short-sighted, and always ready to charge.” I hope I can persuade you otherwise; that lawyers can be a force for good by helping to achieve net-zero carbon emissions.
One of the most significant developments has been in establishing legal liability when pursuing damages claims against private companies.
Since the 1970s, there has been a tsunami of growth in the number of climate litigation legal cases worldwide targeting both governments and corporates. For example, activists successfully challenged the German government’s climate policies on human rights grounds earlier this year. The court’s groundbreaking ruling held that, by enacting policies and targets that effectively placed the burden of radical emissions cuts on future generations, and that, given both climate change and the measures required to cut emissions have an impact on virtually every type of freedom, the rights of future generations had been compromised. One of the most significant developments has been in establishing legal liability when pursuing damages claims against private companies. The claimant must prove a causal connection
between the actions of a corporate entity and an event which results in loss. Proving this link has remained elusive, but, thanks to modern climate models and methodologies, it is now possible to connect the probability of a weather-related event to human activity and quantify the contribution made by greenhouse gas emissions. For instance, one case currently on appeal against German energy multinational RWE concerns a Peruvian farmer whose village was flooded by a melting glacier. As the damages were caused by carbon emissions, and RWE caused a portion of the emissions, the plaintiffs seek to establish that RWE must pay a percentage of the damages. As well as litigation, lawyers can help in their function of creating contracts and legislation. One initiative is The Chancery Lane Project, a collaborative effort between lawyers around the globe to develop an open source data bank of new, climate-conscious legal clauses which anyone can draw on. The provisions range from requiring suppliers to provide sustainable products to facility agreements conditional on emissions reductions. My firm is a participating member and we will be working on a full study of clauses for the energy sector in advance of COP26. Mahatma Gandhi once said that ‘the future depends on what we do today.’ There is a huge amount that lawyers can do right now to help build a better, more climate secure future.
