Climate Science and Law Forum explores damage-based claims against illegal deforestation
October 2023 - Rika Fajrini, legal researcher at Conservation Litigation and the Indonesian Center for Environmental Law, joined a workshop held by the recently launched Climate Science and Law Forum to explore damage-based claims in the context of environmental litigation.
The virtual workshop was attended by a global panel of lawyers, legal researchers, and social and environmental scientists.
The Forum is a collaboration between Mishcon de Reya LLP (MdR), the Sustainable Law Programme at Oxford University (‘the SLP’), the LSE Grantham Research Institute (‘GRI’) and Imperial College London’s Grantham Institute (‘GI’), and aims to create a space for discussion and exchange to identify new opportunities and priorities to advance strategic environmental litigation that is strongly science-based and has a better prospect of success.
The workshop focused on damage-based claims against corporate actors for supply chain links to illegal deforestation.
The first half of the session presented case studies on how science is used to prove cross-border environmental impact along supply chains, and how foreign corporate actors can be held responsible. The latter part delved into constructing a damage claim and identifying appropriate remedies. The cases presented have attempted to incorporate a variety of remedies, including reparative remedies – such as compensating indigenous people for loss of opportunity linked to use of nature - and preventive measures for potential harm, such as ordering corporate actors to comply with their duty of vigilance, and reparative remedies such as compensation to indigenous people due to loss of opportunity over preserved nature.
Conservation Litigation seeks to enhance this approach by exploring remedies that actively repair the harm to biodiversity on the ground, moving beyond monetary compensation toward restoration-action-based remedy.
Speaking about the Forum, Joana Setzer, Assistant Professorial Research Fellow at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a member of the Advisory Committee of Conservation Litigation, commented "Collaboration and communication between lawyers and scientists play a crucial role in climate litigation. The intersection of legal expertise and scientific insight necessitates lawyers to be well-versed and actively involved in the latest climate science. Simultaneously, scientists can discover a vital conduit for their work to furnish essential evidence and practical applications through the law.”