Smiley Movement logo

New 'Liability Map' Shows How We Can Hold Parties Responsible For Climate Change

Words by Smiley Team

A global climate coalition have released a “liability roadmap”: a first-of-its-kind tool outlining how local to global decision makers, including government officials, can hold polluting industries liable for the climate damage they knowingly cause, while unlocking climate finance needed to address the climate crisis and implement solutions.

This roadmap, released just one week before UN climate week, is the next stage in the global campaign to Make Big Polluters Pay.

Last September, international climate organisations launched a global call for Big Polluter liability at the UN Secretary General’s Climate Action Summit in New York City. At COP25 in Madrid, the demands hundreds of thousands of people to make Big Polluters pay were delivered to government delegates. Organisations and signatories echoing this call hail from around 70 countries including Bolivia, The Philippines, and Nigeria.

“Big Polluters have wrecked our climate, ecosystems, lives and livelihoods, for too long. They manage to abdicate any responsibility, and only benefit from the damage they cause, which falls disproportionately on Global South communities, Indigenous Peoples, people of colour, women, workers, farmers, peasants and low-income communities." said Sara Shaw, Climate Justice & Energy Program Coordinator, Friends of the Earth International.

The Liability Roadmap is a tool we can use to call to account those who have knowingly caused the climate crisis, and make them pay. Not only that, it lays the foundations for systemic change - reducing corporate power and ensuring resources for the much-needed just transformation,”

Liability has taken on new importance amid the COVID-19 pandemic and unprecedented climate disasters. Many Big Polluters are in large part responsible for the multi-faceted crises people are facing and are still attempting to profit from fuelling it – demanding government bailouts and rolling out PR schemes that position themselves as solutions.

“The liability roadmap is about more than lawsuits and courtrooms. This is about making Big Polluters pay for the havoc they’ve wreaked by fuelling the climate crisis and about forcing them to end their abuses. This is about making Big Polluters pay for causing decades of suffering and destruction in communities on the global frontlines of the climate crisis, with no end in sight." commented Sriram Madhusoodanan, U.S. climate campaign director, Corporate Accountability.

"The roadmap will carry us further down the road where Big Polluters are forced to put people’s well-being and the well-being of the Earth and its ecosystems above expansion, extraction, and profit making,”

Fossil fuel and other polluting industry liability is a growing area of focus for climate experts, activists, academics and governments alike as the industry’s long history of denial and the link between industry emissions and climate impacts becomes more evidenced. From U.S. states to Vanuatu to Peru, elected officials and people are exploring holding polluters like the fossil fuel industry liable for its long history of deceit and environmental destruction.

Earlier this year, the expansion of Heathrow Airport was successfully stopped after civil society argued it was a violation of the UK government’s Paris Agreement commitments. The Philippines’ commission on human rights has concluded that the fossil fuel industry can be held legally responsible for their role in climate change. Indian fisherman challenging the International Finance Corporation (IFC) secured a precedent-setting judgement in the U.S. Supreme Court in 2019.

There are a variety of ways you can get involved with the campaign including featuring the Liability Roadmap on your website, blog, or newsletter. Additionally, sharing the liability roadmap with decision makers and allies you have connections with who you think might be interested in implementing its measures or organising around it is helpful. You can also reach out to any “influencers” you are connected with and ask them to help amplify on social media.

This article aligns with the following UN SDGs

You might also like…