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  • NEWS FEATURE

Climate science is supporting lawsuits that could help save the world

Governments have failed to slow climate change quickly enough, so activists are using courts to compel countries and companies to act — increasingly with help from forefront science.
  1. Quirin Schiermeier
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Demonstrators march with placards and banners reading 'Fridays for Justice' and 'Climate justice now', Munich 2019

Thousands of people marched in Munich, Germany, in September 2019 to call for more urgency in fighting climate change. Credit: Sachelle Babbar/ZUMA Wire/Alamy

Friederike Otto hadn’t really thought much about the legal world when she answered the phone one day in 2018. On the other end of the line was Petra Minnerop, a scholar of international law at the University of Durham, UK, who was exploring how the legal system might help to save the planet.

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Nature 597, 169-171 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-02424-7

References

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