Legal implications of the climate-health crisis: A case study analysis of the role of public health in climate litigation

climate litigation and provides practical recommendations to address barriers to positioning legal arguments in public health-centric frames. Climate Litigation reveals the ways in which the threats of litigation can shape the transition to an economy which is not based on environmentally-devastating anthropogenic activities. Therefore, there is an urgent need for individuals, groups, stakeholders, and consumers to bring litigation that is correlated to a public health concern. Although litigation is often a lengthy, stressful and costly process, it may force governments and corporations to prioritize planetary and human health over profit. Background Climate change and human health Since its identification as a growing environmental threat, climate change has generated con- cern from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. Only relatively recently has the public health perspective gained traction within the broader climate policy dialogue. There is now robust data to substantiate the claim that climate change significantly and neg- atively impacts human health both directly and indirectly through a series of complex, inter- acting social and environmental determinants. This climate-health nexus featured strongly in the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) [7] and was further expanded in the Working Group II contribution to AR6, Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability [8]. Climate-driven health threats have taken the form of rising food [9, 10] and water [11, 12] insecurity, deteriorating air quality [13, 14], new infectious disease outbreaks [15–17], and

fatal and disease-inflicting floods [18], droughts [19, 20], coastal storms [21, 22], wildfires [23, 24], heat waves [25, 26], as well as ecological grief and disaster-induced trauma which drive mental health illnesses worldwide [27, 28]. Intensifying climate-related disasters and food and water shortages also have broader, indirect consequences on human health, as mediated by their effects on patterns of conflict, forced displacement, and migration [29–31]. This ongoing “climate-health crisis” is expected to contribute further to rising global mor- bidity and mortality and social and economic suffering in the years to come [32]. Yet as stated in the Lancet Commission on the Legal Determinants of Health, “While law can be a powerful tool for advancing global health, it remains substantially underutilised and poorly understood. Working in partnership, public health lawyers and health professionals can become champi- ons for evidence-based laws to ensure the public’s health and safety” [33]. Law is a powerful tool to advance global health because climate change adversely affects the physical health and mental health of people in all countries [34]. Present development challenges causing high vul- nerability are influenced by historical and ongoing patterns of inequity such as colonialism, especially for many indigenous peoples and local communities [34]. Yet, according to the World Economic Forum “groups of stakeholders (the private sector, corporate and financial organizations) have taken part in a system that funds the destruction of nature” [35]. This is

enabled by a rule of law, which more often gives primacy to corporate rights over the health of nature. Using scientific evidence, namely climate science and public health, law can advance health, human rights, and the rights of nature. Climate law, policies and economic incentives Climate laws and policies are concerned with ‘mitigating, regulating or adapting’ industrial activity which causes climate change. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was signed by 154 states in 1992 acknowledging “that the global nature of climate change calls for the widest possible cooperation by all countries and their participation PLOS ONE Public health as a legal tool in climate litigation PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0268633 June 15, 2022 3 / 31