A place for people's knowledge in climate evidence: Exploring civic evidence in climate litigation

Abstract

This article examines the possibilities for data gathered by individuals and communities to demonstrate climate impacts on people's lives in domestic and international climate litigation, as well as the likely procedural constraints that such evidence may encounter. Building on recent decisions of domestic, regional and international courts and bodies, and looking in particular at cases related to climate displacement, we consider the potential for civic evidence to provide valuable testimony in climate litigation, for example, grounding abstract and diffuse harms in personal and locally relevant frames. The article concludes by advancing a research agenda to test, and support or disprove, the argument developed that civic evidence from climate‐affected people could be more robustly deployed in climate litigation and could have a complementary and reinforcing, rather than competing, role alongside institutional evidence.