Climate Litigation Lab
Overview
Our Climate Litigation Lab, led by Dr. Benjamin Franta, applies rigorous, multidisciplinary research methods to practical challenges presented by climate change litigation. We interface with climate litigation practitioners and stakeholders from around the world to understand the strategic and evidentiary landscape and conduct research across the natural, social, and legal sciences to help enable just and effective legal outcomes at scale. The Climate Litigation Lab is embedded within the Oxford Sustainable Law Programme and collaborates widely with researchers and practitioners from across the University and beyond.
Our research themes include:
- Legal strategy: We conduct legal research to promote accountability, effective remedies, and a healthier world for people and nature.
- Investigations: We investigate legally relevant obstruction of — and solutions for — the sustainability transition in order to accelerate effective action on climate change.
- Damages: We measure and quantify harms caused by climate change around the world to inform legal action, public policy, and journalism.
Long-term workstreams
Exposing and counteracting climate greenwashing (workstream leader: Dr. Juliana Vélez Echeverri)
Greenwashing — the practice of portraying activities, products, or companies as more environmentally friendly than they actually are — is widespread. In the context of climate change, greenwashing causes enormous, irreversible harm by confusing the public about the causes of and solutions to climate change, misdirecting attention, and delaying effective action. We are developing novel climate greenwashing databases to inform legal actions, journalism, and advertising industry reform, including through machine-learning-based tools being developed in collaboration with the Oxford Department of Computer Science and others.
Measuring and quantifying damages from climate change
Damage from climate change – economic, human health, cultural, nature-based, and more – is enormous. The law can potentially provide compensation and reparation for such damage and force polluters to internalize the costs of their products and activities, but such legal remedies require measurement and proof of causation. Our climate damages workstream develops tools to measure, quantify, and define climate damages across a range of impacts and around the world to inform legal action, public policy, public communication and journalism, and more.
Core team
Research assistants and consultants
- Hrishikesh Barman
Consultant
Project: Building novel climate greenwashing databases using machine learning. - Blaire Bernstein
Consultant
Project: Using law to address international state fossil fuel financing. - Cheryl Cheung
Consultant
Project: Exploring potential applications of Victim Compensation Funds in the context of U.S. climate litigation. - Sam Faroqui
Consultant
Project: Building novel climate greenwashing databases using manual methods - Vanessa Fetter
Consultant
Project: Litigation opportunities for addressing investor-facing climate greenwashing. - Benjamin Hitchcock
Consultant
Project: Building novel climate greenwashing databases using manual methods. - Lara Ibrahim
Research Assistant (DPhil Candidate, Law, Oxford)
Project: Climate change and international human rights. - Sindi Kuçi
Consultant
Project: Litigation opportunities in the carbon offset industry. - Kuberan Kumaresan
Consultant
Project: Potential climate damages litigation in Southeast Asia - Guilherme De Magalhaes
Research Assistant (Master of Law and Finance Candidate, Oxford)
Project: Identifying opportunities for climate litigation financing. - Sol Meckievi
Consultant (SLP)
Project: Climate change and human rights. - Gastón Medici-Colombo
Consultant (SLP)
Project: Climate change and human rights - Patrick Hegarty Morrish
Research Assistant (DPhil Student in History, Trinity College, Oxford)
Project: Mobile pastoralists and the international legal regime in a climate of change: case studies for strategic litigation. - Meghana (Meg) Patakota
Consultant
Project: Climate Litigation AI Resource Assistant (CLARA). - Jake Rutherford
Consultant
Project: Climate Litigation AI Resource Assistant (CLARA). - Lucy Temple
Consultant
Project: State of climate loss and damage science and law. - Annika Weis
Consultant
Project: Building novel climate greenwashing databases using manual methods. - Gwenyth Wren
Consultant
Project: Identifying jurisdictions for strategic climate litigation.
Contact us
If you have any questions, would like to learn more, or want to get involved: Please contact Benjamin Franta. For general questions about the programme please email the Oxford Sustainable Law Programme.
Research at the Climate Litigation Lab is generously supported by the United Nations Environment Programme, KR Foundation, Rockefeller Family Fund, Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller Fund, Glaser Progress Foundation, WC Kohler Foundation and others.