Watch the webinar summary and the full video
On October 7, our president Pedro Martins and our member Ana Carolina Salomão participated in the Climate Action Advocacy and Litigation Funding webinar, with Tomás Jatobá, founding partner of SPS Capital, and Pedro Hartung, director of policies and children’s rights at Instituto Alana. In the webinar, they talked about how climate litigation and advocacy connect to provide a better climate for our planet.
“We cannot forget that corporations are made of people. Raising awareness among people about accountability for climate change is very important, as this can change their mindsets and, therefore, influence corporations and public behavior.”
- Ana Carolina Salomão Queiroz
Pedro Martins pointed out that in the last forty years climate change has been intensifying, causing problems for humans. He illustrated these changes with rising sea levels, the planet’s average temperature and periods of drought across the globe, exposing the socioeconomic problems they bring. For the Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres, the problem is urgent:
“The warnings are deafening, and the evidence is irrefutable: greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation are suffocating our planet and putting billions of people at immediate risk. Global warming is affecting all regions of the Earth, and several changes are becoming irreversible.”
His opinion is corroborated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which says that the situation is alarming: if the temperature rises to 1.5 ºC, between 20% and 30% of species will become extinct.
Pedro believes that the actions of the Executive Branches are not enough. Large companies can fight against climate change and, paradoxically, they are causing it. Litigation is a tool to drive change in the public and private sectors, which can come in the form of adaptation (anticipating and acting to minimize climate change) and mitigation (easing impacts by reducing greenhouse gases). Thus, the burden of having to act shifts from the population to corporations, which can actually deal with it.
However, companies act differently in the global South and North, and that is why international litigation is important. Such litigation, however, requires funding, because producing a sustainable case and evidence for it depends on complex technical opinions. This is why civil society involvement is necessary.
“Holding companies accountable can be a tool to encourage them to act.”
- Ana Carolina Salomão Queiroz
For Pedro Hartung, climate issues and holding companies accountable on an international stage are also urgent for the protection of children. Children are more exposed and more susceptible to climate problems, and while no child is responsible for climate change, they will pay the highest price: “Most of the ecological problems that occur in Brazil are caused by international companies with the consent of the states. (…) Companies treat the lives of children in the Southern Hemisphere differently than they treat the lives of children in the Northern Hemisphere.”
He points out that the country is going through a political and economic crisis and that litigation needs to be connected to strategies that promote public debate.
Ana Salomão explained that climate litigation is important to promote access to justice. These cases usually involve wealthy companies, located far from the people who were victimized, who are unreachable by them. Finding financing not only protects these victims, but rebalances this unfair balance of power between companies and people.
However, climate litigation cannot be lost, because the cost is high. On the other hand, victims are usually vulnerable people and, therefore, the offices that file this type of action must take the particularities of the victims and the jurisdictions into consideration. She cited as an example the PGMBM, which works with a contingency fee: a fee that is applied after the case is won.
For Tomás Jatobá, this scenario of holding companies accountable generates changes. Companies that do not follow the best environmental, social and governance (ESG) practices are doomed to failure, as they are not competitive: investors will prefer to trust the one that has the least risk of suffering a lawsuit. On the other hand, if companies are not held accountable, this discourages all of them from following best practices. To fund a cause, one question must be asked: am I helping the right side?
The Brazilian legal framework is very good, but it is not reinforced by the powers that be. International litigation presents the possibility of applying this framework in jurisdictions that are more friendly to environmental issues to make companies rethink before acting differently here.
The webinar can be watched in full, in English, on YouTube: