Dr Ben Franta discusses how PR and consultancy firms are helping fossil fuel companies delay the clean energy transition. 

Ben Franta, senior climate litigation research fellow at the Oxford Smith School, comments on how the precedents set by previous litigations over tobacco, opioids, and asbestos could play a role in upcoming climate cases. "They are good examples that the legal system can take on big societal harms that the other branches of government frankly are just not addressing,” he said.

In a series of powerful 'hopes' for Egypt, 20 leading researchers from across the University have recorded wishes and warnings in videos and written messages for the delegates to COP27.

To advance the aim of building a business of climate and sustainability conscious colleagues, the firm partnered with the University of Oxford Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment to deliver the Climate and Sustainability Accelerator Programme.

A group of law professors including Dr Thom Wetzer have proposed a financial mechanism they’re calling a “green pill” that would help companies reach ambitious net-zero targets and offer investors greater certainty that corporate sustainability goals will be met.

The UK Centre for Greening Finance and Investment and the Oxford Sustainable Law Programme are set to launch a new workstream pinpointing what climate-related legal risk means in financial terms for companies. Dr Thom Wetzer told RI, 'It's clear that litigation risk is real - it's not some figment of an activist's imagination.'

Dr Thom Wetzer comments on a lawsuit brought by a Peruvian farmer, Saúl Luciano Lliuya, against RWE, Germany’s largest utility company. He said part of the reason for the uptick in climate litigation is the climate “governance gap The Paris Agreement lacks an enforcement mechanism to ensure that countries do what they’ve signed up for . . . As long as these governance gaps persist, we will see more and more litigation to try and plug those gaps.” There is also no net zero legislation governing what companies can or must do in most parts of the world, he adds.

Newly-available scientific evidence, which could prove critical to the success of climate-related lawsuits, is often not produced in court, according to a new study published by the Oxford Sustainable Law Programme and Environmental Change Institute.