Lecture
CPP Colloquium 'Double Bill' - ’Strategies towards climate justice’
- Laura Garcia Portela & Ivo Wallimann-Helmer
- Date
- Thursday 5 February 2026
- Time
- Location
-
P.J. Veth
Nonnensteeg 1-3
2311 VJ Leiden - Room
- 0.06
The Centre of Political Philosophy is pleased to announce a lecture by Laura Garcia Portela, Assistant professor Philosophy, Rotterdam and Ivo Wallimann-Helmer, Prof. Dr. phil. in Environmental Humanities, Fribourg.
Climate Justice in Courtrooms: A Normative Inquiry into Reasoning in Climate Litigation
Climate litigation cases have grown rapidly in number and influence. While framed legally, climate litigation appeals to principles of climate justice, understood as independent moral standards to be met in the face of climate change. Yet, legal argumentation relies only on intuitive accounts of climate justice, while philosophical debates rarely assess how climate justice principles could be integrated into legal reasoning. This paper bridges this gap by asking what kind of legal argument can best satisfy minimum normative requirements of climate justice for mitigation, while remaining tenable within established legal structures. We begin by evaluating an argument present in influential climate litigation cases such as Urgenda and Neubauer, the two-thresholds legal argument. This argument affirms that going below certain levels of mitigation action constitutes a breach of the state’s duty to protect human rights and that countries should thus increase their mitigation efforts to avoid human rights violations. However, we argue that this argument is logically flawed and thus different alternatives should be sought. After considering a human-rights based argument, we conclude that a principles-oriented argument satisfies better minimum requirements for climate justice. We provide some examples of legal principles that could help this argument find a legal foothold.
The Janus Faces of Responsibility in Climate Loss and Damage Policy (co-authored with Kian Mintz-Woo)
Responsibility for funding climate Loss & Damage, the impacts beyond our ability to adapt, is highly contested. This paper uses a philosophical approach to clarify and contrast two important conceptual accounts of responsibility before arguing that they can be combined in making a more coherent account for climate policy. The first type of account considers responsibility to be a function of historical contribution to anthropogenic climate change and, hence, for negative climate impacts. The second type of account considers responsibility to be a function of ability or capacity to address incoming climatic threats or risks. The first contribution of this paper is to elucidate the strongest forms of both accounts and show their weaknesses; the second contribution is to justify a combined account, which we call a “Janus-faced” version of responsibility for climate Loss & Damage. The paper concludes with some thoughts about applications to national and international climate policy.
About the Center for Political Philosophy (CPP) Colloquia Series
The CPP is a collaboration between the Institute for Philosophy and the Institute for Political Science at Leiden University. Attendance of the Colloquia is free and there is no need to register. See CPP for more information. For further questions please contact dr. Jelena Belic j.belic@fsw.leidenuniv.nl
All are welcome!