The Brazilian National Council of Justice (CNJ) has recently issued Recommendation No. 156/2024, advising all branches of the Brazilian Judiciary and judges to adopt the second scope of the CNJ’s Protocol for Judging Environmental Lawsuits (Protocol). This second scope provides guidelines for quantifying the impact of environmental damages on climate change. In 2023, the CNJ
On November 11, 2024, one of the first substantive outcomes of the 29th Session of the UN Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP29) was approved. The President of COP19 introduced a draft decision of the Conference of the Parties Serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the
On 15 October, the UK’s independent public spending watchdog (the National Audit Office or NAO) published its overview of the Government’s approach to the three areas of environmental improvement, net zero and climate change adaptation.
The report provides a high-level critique of Government programmes to date on these three interrelated areas emphasising the scale of
On July 15, 2024, Governor Gavin Newsom proposed amendments that would, among other things, delay initial reporting deadlines for two of California’s recently enacted climate-related disclosure laws by two years.
Governor Newsom signed the two bills, Climate Corporate Data Accountability Act (California Senate Bill 253 (SB-253)), relating to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions disclosures, and the
According to the Grantham Institute’s 2024 Global Trends in Climate Change Litigation Policy Report (the “Report“) – which was published on 27 June 2024 – climate-related litigation against private sector actors continues to be on the rise. The Report highlights that over 230 climate-related lawsuits have been initiated against corporations and trade associations since 2015, with over two thirds of those lawsuits filed since 2020. The Report also highlights that the growth rate of climate-related cases is showing signs of stabilisation, at over 200 new climate-related cases per year. The risk of private sector actors facing climate-related lawsuits is not, therefore, showing any signs of diminishing.Continue Reading CLIMATE LITIGATION – THE GRANTHAM RESEARCH INSTITUTE ON CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE ENVIRONMENT PUBLISHES ITS 2024 GLOBAL TRENDS IN CLIMATE LITIGATION REPORT
The Supreme Court of New Zealand recently overturned strike-out decisions to allow climate change claims (involving a new climate tort) to proceed to trial.Continue Reading Smith v Fonterra: A Climate Change Litigation Development
In a survey carried out by HSBC in 2023, 97% of real estate developers and investors said net zero was important to their business and 59% of the largest real estate companies said net zero was their top priority.
A third of companies in the sector already have Transition Plans and the push for formalising Transition Plans across the sector is increasing.
In April 2024, the Transition Plan Taskforce (“TPT”) published its final set of transition plan resources to help businesses transition to net zero.
In this article, we consider the guidance available to the real estate sector in preparing Transition Plans (“TP”).Continue Reading Transition Plans & Real Estate
Replace, Reduce and Remove.
The 3Rs that constitute the three-pronged approach espoused by PUB, the national water agency of Singapore, in its hefty goal of achieving net zero emissions by 2045. The strategy by PUB focuses on replacing fossil fuels with renewable solar energy, investing in research and development to reduce the energy required in
The SEC today paused implementation of the climate rules the agency rolled out less than one month ago, in the face of significant legal challenges in numerous federal lawsuits. The rules would impose substantial disclosure mandates on companies, including concerning the costs of extreme weather events, corporate strategies for addressing climate change, corporate governance procedures
On March 15, 2024, the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit granted an administrative stay of the climate-related disclosure rules recently adopted by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”). The SEC rules require public companies to provide information about climate-related risks that could significantly impact their business or financial statements. See