ABSTRACT

An increasing number of climate lawsuits worldwide address responsibilities of climate change mitigation or adaptation. Yet, we know little about wider socio-political consequences of climate change litigation. This study focusses on the successful case of Urgenda vs. the Netherlands, which has created precedence for similar lawsuits against governments in other countries. Following theories of intra-media and political agenda setting, we analyze interactions between media attention (newspaper articles) and political attention (parliamentary questions) for the Urgenda case and higher-level issues, namely climate policy and climate change in general. Employing Vector Autoregression models we find that media attention for the lawsuit led to greater parliamentary attention. Moreover, we find bottom-up agenda-setting effects with media attention for the case influencing greater media and political attention for climate policies. This study reveals that climate litigation can have indirect consequences beyond the court ruling with media attention for a lawsuit as a crucial vantage point.

摘要

全球越来越多的气候诉讼涉及缓解或适应气候变化的责任。然而，我们对气候变化诉讼的更广泛的社会政治后果知之甚少。本研究侧重于 Urgenda 诉荷兰的成功案例，该案例为针对其他国家政府的类似诉讼创造了先例。遵循媒体内部和政治议程设置的理论，我们分析了媒体关注（报纸文章）和政治关注（议会问题）之间的相互作用，以解决乌尔根达案和更高层次的问题，即气候政策和一般气候变化。使用向量自回归模型，我们发现媒体对诉讼的关注导致了议会的更大关注。而且，我们发现媒体关注自下而上的议程设置效应，影响了媒体和政治对气候政策的更大关注。这项研究表明，气候诉讼可能会产生超出法院裁决的间接后果，媒体对诉讼的关注是一个关键的有利位置。