ACCEL 2021 Distinguished Speaker Address – Can climate litigation save the planet?: the role of climate attribution science

Speakers: Dr Petra Minnerop, Durham University and Dr Friederike Otto, University of Oxford and Global Climate Science Programme

Litigants are increasingly approaching the courts in the face of inadequate action by governments and corporations on climate change. Plaintiffs want compensatory damages for losses incurred as a result of the defendants’ greenhouse gas emissions, or are asking courts to compel governments and corporations, to reduce their emissions. They also want financial institutions to stop financing the construction of high-emitting infrastructure, and banks and businesses to disclose their exposure to the financial risks associated with climate change.

This Distinguished Address shows how climate attribution science assists with establishing the all important causal relationship between the defendants’ emissions and the plaintiffs’ losses.

Speakers

Dr Petra Minnerop is Associate Professor of International Law at Durham University where she is also the University’s Academic Lead for COP 26, Co-Director of the Global Policy Institute and Co-Director of the Research Centre Law and Global Justice. Prior to joining Durham Law School, Petra has held academic positions at the Universities of Dundee, Munich and Göttingen, and worked as Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, Heidelberg, and at the Max Planck Foundation for International Peace and the Rule of Law, Heidelberg. She is a member of the Bar in Germany.

Dr Friederike Otto is an Honorary Research Associate of the Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford, and an Associate Professor in the Global Climate Science Programme. She leads several projects understanding the impacts of man-made climate change on natural and social systems with a particular focus on Africa and India. Fredi is the co-lead of World Weather Attribution (WWA), an international effort to analyse and communicate the possible influence of climate change on extreme weather events. In 2019 Fredi was named one of New Scientist’s ‘Ones to Watch’ and in 2020 climate change attribution was named one of MIT Tech Review’s top ten breakthrough technologies. In 2020, Fredi became one of just 10 international climate scientists to join the core writing team of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Synthesis Report of the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6)

Chair: Professor Tim Stephens, The University of Sydney Law School

Running order

6pm Welcome to Country delivered by Yvonne Weldon, and introduction by Professor Stephens
6.10pm ACCEL 2021 Distinguished Address, Associate Professor Petro Minnerop and Dr Friederike Otto
7.15pm Q&A
7.30pm Close

Thursday 9 December, 6-7.30pm AEDT

This is an online event held on Zoom. 

CPD Points: 1.5

This event is hosted by the Australian Centre for Climate and Environmental Law at The University of Sydney Law School. 

(Banner image sourced from Canva)