title: Causality and the fate of climate litigation: The role of the social superstructure narrative

authors: Otto, Friederike E. L.

abstract: Climate litigation has become a strategic tool to push for climate justice, including compensation for losses caused by climate change. Many cases rely on the establishment of a causal relationship between the defendants' emission of greenhouse gases (GHG) and the plaintiffs' losses. All decided cases seeking compensation for a concrete climate related impact have been unsuccessful (thus far). Legal scholars as well as social and natural scientists have looked at individual cases and evidence of these unsuccessful claims, aiming to identify legal and scientific hurdles. Based on previous research where we analysed specific cases, we step back from a case-specific analysis in this article and identify the social context in which law and science operate and intersect. We assert that without a general understanding of the urgency of climate change and the scientifically proven fact that climate change impacts the present, and that it is possible to attribute individual losses to human-caused climate change, the fate and future of climate litigation focusing on losses and damages will continue to encounter major obstacles in courts. This is despite the increasingly sophisticated strategies of litigants; the positive outcome of some strategic litigation and improvements in the field of climate science, all of which would be expected to sway for a successful future of the fight against climate change.

text: Causality and the fate of climate litigation: The role of the social superstructure narrative Climate litigation has become a strategic tool to push for climate justice, including compensation for losses caused by climate change. Many cases rely on the establishment of a causal relationship between the defendants' emission of greenhouse gases (GHG) and the plaintiffs' losses. All decided cases seeking compensation for a concrete climate related impact have been unsuccessful (thus far). Legal scholars as well as social and natural scientists have looked at individual cases and evidence of these unsuccessful claims, aiming to identify legal and scientific hurdles. Based on previous research where we analysed specific cases, we step back from a case-specific analysis in this article and identify the social context in which law and science operate and intersect. We assert that without a general understanding of the urgency of climate change and the scientifically proven fact that climate change impacts the present, and that it is possible to attribute individual losses to human-caused climate change, the fate and future of climate litigation focusing on losses and damages will continue to encounter major obstacles in courts. This is despite the increasingly sophisticated strategies of litigants; the positive outcome of some strategic litigation and improvements in the field of climate science, all of which would be expected to sway for a successful future of the fight against climate change.

year: 2022

title: Sharing the Costs and Benefits of Energy and Resource Activity: a new book by SEERIL’s Academic Advisory Group

authors: Barrera-Hernández, Lila

subjects: energy and natural resources law

abstract: This article summarises research in the field of energy and natural resources law, on the subject of the sharing of costs and benefits between developer companies, governments and local communities. It addresses a new phase in the sharing of costs and benefits that is readily discerned in many countries worldwide, and which compels a shift in thinking that is centred more traditionally on environmental and resource royalty regimes.

text: Sharing the Costs and Benefits of Energy and Resource Activity: a new book by SEERIL’s Academic Advisory Group This article summarises research in the field of energy and natural resources law, on the subject of the sharing of costs and benefits between developer companies, governments and local communities. It addresses a new phase in the sharing of costs and benefits that is readily discerned in many countries worldwide, and which compels a shift in thinking that is centred more traditionally on environmental and resource royalty regimes.

year: 2017

title: An outsider's guide to public oral history in New Zealand

authors: Mahuika, Nepia

subjects: Oral history

abstract: At the beginning of this century, public history in New Zealand was considered a ‘new term’ in historical practice, described as crucial in both ‘the emergence of professional history writing’ and the assertion of ‘cultural nationalism.’¹ In the past decade, scholars here have highlighted its breadth and significance in ‘the employment of historians and the historical method outside academia; in government, private companies, the media, historical societies and museums, as well as those working in private practice.’² Oral history has also become a significant part of public history’s nation-making, key in the collecting of exceptional and ‘ordinary’ public voices.³ For Māori, current definitions of oral and public history are problematic because, as this essay suggests, both are constructed within Pākehā-centric perspectives of history, tradition, orality and what counts as ‘public.’ Public history has been called a ‘slippery process’, often shaped in a contrast between ‘people’s history’ and a ‘search for social cohesion’.4 This search for ‘cohesion’ is a familiar colonial refrain that fuels a healthy native scepticism of public history as yet another settler-centric invention that keeps us on the outside. This essay considers the ways in which public oral history in New Zealand is articulated, noting how this is done within narrow definitions and binaries that displace, ignore, or distort, indigenous perspectives. It suggests a rethinking of oral history as a movement beyond current binaries in the field, and advocates a widening of the meaning of oral sources, methods and politics, in order to include indigenous definitions as legitimately oral and public. This analysis is decolonial, not because it seeks an eradication of nationalism, but because it seeks to disrupt colonial-centric meanings of oral and public history by recentering Māori perspectives as legitimate to the New Zealand public oral history vernacular.

text: An outsider's guide to public oral history in New Zealand At the beginning of this century, public history in New Zealand was considered a ‘new term’ in historical practice, described as crucial in both ‘the emergence of professional history writing’ and the assertion of ‘cultural nationalism.’¹ In the past decade, scholars here have highlighted its breadth and significance in ‘the employment of historians and the historical method outside academia; in government, private companies, the media, historical societies and museums, as well as those working in private practice.’² Oral history has also become a significant part of public history’s nation-making, key in the collecting of exceptional and ‘ordinary’ public voices.³ For Māori, current definitions of oral and public history are problematic because, as this essay suggests, both are constructed within Pākehā-centric perspectives of history, tradition, orality and what counts as ‘public.’ Public history has been called a ‘slippery process’, often shaped in a contrast between ‘people’s history’ and a ‘search for social cohesion’.4 This search for ‘cohesion’ is a familiar colonial refrain that fuels a healthy native scepticism of public history as yet another settler-centric invention that keeps us on the outside. This essay considers the ways in which public oral history in New Zealand is articulated, noting how this is done within narrow definitions and binaries that displace, ignore, or distort, indigenous perspectives. It suggests a rethinking of oral history as a movement beyond current binaries in the field, and advocates a widening of the meaning of oral sources, methods and politics, in order to include indigenous definitions as legitimately oral and public. This analysis is decolonial, not because it seeks an eradication of nationalism, but because it seeks to disrupt colonial-centric meanings of oral and public history by recentering Māori perspectives as legitimate to the New Zealand public oral history vernacular.

year: 2017