Shaping Africa’s Climate Action through Climate Litigation: An Impact Assessment

Abstract

The academic literature scarcely covers court cases from the Global South on climate change. Hence, this paper examines the impact of existing climate litigation on shaping Africa’s climate action and the role of courts in climate change jurisprudence on the continent. The paper determines that: NGOs are key actors in challenging state granted environmental authorisations of projects whose activities violate human rights, affect climate change, and contravene formal procedures. Courts are deciding that fossil fuel activities like gas flaring violate fundamental human rights and exacerbate climate change. They call for amending laws allowing for such activities to bring them in conformity with laws on the protection of fundamental human rights. In a balancing act of the socio-economic rights and environmental human rights violations courts acknowledge that fossil fuels form part of the energy mix of sources on account of existing government laws and policies aimed at addressing priorities like energy security and poverty alleviation, a context that should inform climate change action. The implication is that short of laws banning fossil fuel activities, these activities will continue under enabling laws thus limiting the extent of court’s intervention in challenging climate change.