Between Heat and Hope

The Indirect Impacts of Climate Litigation In this episode of Between Heat and Hope we are joined by Professor César Rodriguez-Garavito. César Rodriguez-Garavito is Professor of Law at the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University School of Law. He is the founding director of the More-Than-Human Life Program, the Earth Rights Research & Action Clinic, and the Commons on Machines, Policy, Automation & Society at NYU Law. His work focuses on international environmental law, Indigenous peoples’ rights, technology, and more-than-human rights. In 2025, Cesar published Climate Change on Trial: Mobilizing Human Rights Litigation to Accelerate Climate Action with Cambridge University Press.The conversation explores the indirect impacts of climate litigation and the ways in which climate cases shape politics, public discourse, and the democratic process beyond the courtroom. Cesar reflects on his trajectory from socio-economic rights and socio-environmental conflicts to climate litigation and the rights of nature. Throughout the talk, we compare the development of climate litigation in Europe with experiences from Latin America and other regions of the world, discussing how different legal cultures and political contexts shape climate cases.Drawing on Cesar’s earlier work on judicial activism and socio-economic rights, we discuss the distinction between direct and indirect effects of litigation, as well as the material and symbolic dimensions of climate judgments. We also explore the emergence of a global “litigation ecosystem,” where lawyers, scientists, activists, and communities increasingly collaborate across jurisdictions and disciplines. From the KlimaSeniorinnen judgment before the European Court of Human Rights to broader questions of standing, representation, and access to justice, the episode reflects on the democratic implications of climate litigation and the risks and opportunities of rights-based approaches to the climate crisis. Finally, Cesar shares his thoughts on the future of climate litigation and the transformative potential that climate cases may still hold. RecommendationsCesar Rodriguez-Garavito, Climate Change on Trial: Mobilizing Human Rights Litigation to Accelerate Climate Action (Cambridge University Press, 2025).Cesar Rodriguez-Garavito (2011) Beyond the Courtroom: The Impact of Judicial Activism on Socioeconomic Rights in Latin America, Texas Law Review, 89 (7), 1669 – 1698.Robert Macfarlane, Is a River Alive? (Penguin, 2025).David Wallace-Wells, The Uninhabitable Earth (Penguin, 2019). AboutEditing: Clara KammeringerMusic: “Delayed Flight” by Michael Ramir C. via mixkitRecorded at the University of Amsterdam, April 2026 The LitDem ProjectThis project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement n° 101125511).

A Law and Political Economy Approach to Climate LitigationIn this episode, Ioannis Kampourakis, Associate Professor at Erasmus University Rotterdam and co-director of the Law and Political Economy (LPE) in Europe project joins Rena Hänel, PhD researcher at the University of Amsterdam, to talk about what is to be learned from applying a Law and Political Economy lens to climate litigation.The episode begins with Ioannis describing the theoretical foundations of Law and Political Economy as a stream of legal scholarship that emphasizes the law as being constitutive of markets and the economy more generally. He then applies these insights to explain both how law has helped to create and sustain unsustainable economic patterns at the root of the climate crisis, and how climate litigation could harness the transformative potential of the law by focusing on what he calls structural enablers of economic power.The conversation then turns to the practical work that the LPE in Europe project is doing with civil society organizations engaged in strategic litigation, including climate litigation, to integrate insights from scholarship into their legal strategies. In the end, Ioannis and Rena discuss ideas for potential future case strategies that could address the climate crisis as part of a wider "polycrisis" of climate change, widening economic inequality and wars, among others.ReferencesLPE in Europe ProjectUrgendaMilieudefensie v ShellLliuya v RWEWorkshop: Advancing a Law and Political Economy Approach to Strategic Litigation, LPE in Europe (2024)RecommendationsIlias Alami and Adam D. Dixon, The spectre of state capitalism (Oxford University Press, 2024).Thea Riofrancos, Extraction: The frontiers of green capitalism (WW Norton & Company, 2025).David McDermott Hughes, Who Owns the Wind?: Climate crisis and the hope of renewable energy (Verso Books, 2021).AboutEditing: Martyna Durlik, Clara KammeringerMusic: “Delayed Flight” by Michael Ramir C. via mixkitRecorded at the University of Amsterdam, February 2026The LitDem ProjectThis project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement n° 101125511).

Lawyering before the European Court of Human RightsIn this episode of Between Heat and Hope, Veronika Fikfak, professor of Human Rights and International Law at UCL, joins us to discuss the ‘European Human Rights Bar’, this is the network of lawyers that bring cases to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). Having just completed an ERC Starting Grant and being about to start an ERC Consolidated Grant, Veronika has done extensive empirical work – both qualitative and quantitative – on the ECtHR. In this episode, she shares her great expertise on lawyering before the ECtHR and links it for us to current and future climate cases before the Strasbourg Court. We discuss opportunities and limits of bringing a climate case to the ECtHR, reflect on the consequences of the particularities of climate litigation in light of Veronika's research findings on the European Human Rights Bar in general, and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the separation but also cooperation between domestic lawyers and their ECHR counterparts.ReferencesKlimaSeniorinnenVeronika FikfakRecommendationsRobert Macfarlane, Is a River Alive? (W. W. Norton & Company, 2025).Monica Feria-Tinta, A Barrister for the Earth: Ten Cases of Hope for Our Future (Faber, 2025).AboutEditing: Clara KammeringerMusic: “Delayed Flight” by Michael Ramir C. via mixkitRecorded at the University of Amsterdam, February 2026The LitDem ProjectThis project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement n° 101125511).

Greenpeace The Netherlands v Netherlands (Bonaire case)In this second episode of Between Heat and Hope, Phillip Paiement, Professor of Law & Governance in the Anthropocene at Tilburg Law School, discusses the Bonaire case of 28 January 2026 with Christina Eckes, professor of European Law at the University of Amsterdam. The conversations covers the adaptation and mitigation aspects of the judgment.In relation to adaptation, it draws out the particular situation of the residents of Bonaire as compared to the resident of the State of the Netherlands, reflects on the missed opportunity to engage more with the colonial history of the claims in this case, and concludes that the case may serve as basis for future litigation by plaintiffs from the Caribbean Netherlands, including not only the special municipalities like Bonaire but potentially also the autonomous constituent countries. More broadly, it offers a basis for equality claims grounded in geographical vulnerability.Concerning mitigation, the discussion covers the judgment’s grounding in the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR)’s KlimaSeniorinnen judgment (2024), the relative absence of the Advisory Opinion (AO) of International Court of Justice on States’ Obligations in Respect to Climate Change (2025), and the District Court’s engagement with fair share. It comes to the conclusion that the Bonaire case applies the budget logic of KlimaSeniorinnen and the ICJ’s AO but could have more clearly developed its express requirement that the State of the Netherlands quantifies its emission allowances as part of the global emission budget that keeps global warming below 1.5°C.ReferencesBonaire Case (Dutch with links to the English translation)KlimaSeniorinnenICJ AO on climate changeUrgendaTransLitigate, Phillip Paiement PI (ERC Starting Grant 2021)RecommendationsKatherina Pistor, The Law of Capitalism and How to Transform It (Yale University Press, 2025).John Vaillant, Fire Weather (Alfred A. Knopf Publishing, 2023).AboutEditing: Clara KammeringerMusic: “Delayed Flight” by Michael Ramir C. via mixkitRecorded at the University of Amsterdam, January 2026The LitDem ProjectThis project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement n° 101125511).