Youth-Led Climate Change Litigation: Crossing the North-South Divide

Abstract

This article provides a critical overview of youth-led climate change litigation, an emerging practice which could go some way towards redressing the injustice the Global South suffers as a result of global warming. It preliminarily explores the political background of such phenomenon, emphasising young people’s growing mistrust of adults, their desire to build a global generational alliance, but also the need to ally with older generations in a world where adults generally monopolise power, money and accepted expertise. It then delineates youth-led litigation’s distinctive features, both substantive and procedural, highlighting its radicality. Children’s and youth’s vulnerabilities enable innovative claims under the public trust doctrine, rights-of-nature approaches, and human rights law. Youth-led litigation is no less radical in terms of the procedural avenues it is exploring, which include generational class actions, direct multistate complaints before international adjudicating bodies, and transnational complaints. The article concludes by offering some thoughts on the prospects of youth-led climate change litigation.