Periodic Reporting for period 2 - CURIAE VIRIDES (How the third wave of global judicial (and social) activism is filling ecological governance gaps and challenging the liability-remedy paradigm.) Reporting period: 2022-07-01 to 2023-12-31 Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project Citizens, policymakers, and organizations struggle to find effective solutions to wicked problems, such as global warming, the survival of species, and conflicts around the value attributed to ecosystems. Could courts solve problems that have not been solved by governments or internationalorganizations? Is it an option for courts to attribute legal personality to ecosystems?The ERC project Curiae Virides (Curiae Virides) investigates how conflicts emerging from actual or potential adverse ecological impacts that cross physical and/or jurisdictional borders transform into lawsuits, what their nature is, which path is followed, and who activates this transformation. Ultimately, Curiae Virides investigates the outcome of triggering courts for the affected persons of these impacts. Particularly, what happens with the affected persons when these lawsuits were lodged by ecological movements that seek primarily to nudge policymakers and leading companies of value chains to keep the economy working within the “safe space to operate” according to the planetary boundaries framework (Rockström et al. 2009)?Although multilateral agreements have been regulating the most important hazards of global economic activities for more than 50 years, the reality is that the Earth system is at serious risk of undergoing structural changes with consequences for ecosystems and present and future generations. Curiae Virides focuses on the micro realities of these global challenges: how transnational ecological conflicts reach courts and whether this option represents an effective alternative strategy vis-à-vis regulations and voluntary corporate accountability schemes that allegedly lack effectiveness.Curiae Virides explores crucial aspects on the role of courts regarding the preservation of ecosystems: firstly, how ecological conflicts are being transformed into legal cases that aim to protect ecosystems. It investigates who the main actors are, such as those who bring forward claims, the allegedly responsible, the stakeholders and the affected rightsholders. Curiae Virides also inquires whether alternative approaches, like grievance mechanisms, are an option compared to traditional court proceedings.Secondly, Curiae Virides examines how social and ecological movements and other stakeholders (SEMS) operate. It delves into how these networks are changing the landscape of social litigation, the scope of ecocentric case law, which refers to legal decisions that attribute an intrinsic or existential value to ecosystems.Thirdly, Curiae Virides investigates the capacity of courts to handle legal cases involving complex aspects, such as ecological adverse impacts attributed to global value chain operations. The project focuses on the quality of the decisions made by these courts from legal, economic, and ecological perspectives. Finally, Curiae Virides investigates the outcomes of these legal actions, this is, what they have achieved, and whether the idea of using lawsuits to address gaps in environmental governance has a broader positive impact on the accessibility of remedies for victims of ecological harm. Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far Curiae Virides is building a dataset that allows to identify cases that strategically seek to fill governance gaps and to test whether strategic litigation could have a waterfall effect for actual victims of adverse transnational impacts. We have identified several variables that seek to capture features of court decisions that can reveal, in the examined cases, whether courts have been an effective option for resolving the multiple conflicts that, together, are the cause of the global environmental crisis, and whether courts have ensured that harmed people can actually benefit from this growing trend.The Curiae Virides dataset that captures the dynamics and magnitude of the transformation of transnational ecological conflicts into lawsuits. The development of dataset is a breakthrough achievement because it combines a unique mix of interdisciplinary conceptual frameworks and methodologies for addressing a wicked problem. The Curiae Virides team used a backward-forward approach following Felstiner et al. (1980) and the conceptualisation of the three waves of social litigation (Lizarazo-Rodriguez, 2021) to design the dataset, besides other conceptual frameworks such as Business and Human Rights and EnvironmentalJustice.The Curiae Virides team screened over 10,000 conflicts from 65 sites, among which 10 datasets and resource centres, and 17 regional and international court repositories, including arbitration and grievance mechanisms. Currently, 2,700+ conflicts make up the population of cases and display the following geographical distribution: Americas 870, Oceania 74, Africa 505, Europe 434, Asia 790, in addition to a few transcontinental cases. These figures, however, do not accurately translate reality. Multiple reasons could explain these numbers: availability of data, attention of the press and civil society organizations to some countries more than others, availability of courts and complaint mechanisms, etc. Therefore, to better explain these transformations, our quantitative analysis is being supported by case law analysis and qualitative empirical analysis. This project also uses empirical evidence to clarify the scope of corporate risk-based due diligence that is expected when environmental and climate risks are integrated into human rights risk assessment. Finally, the project is also assessing the outcomes from courts: whether affected persons get effective remedies and whether new trends in counterclaims are emerging, particularly when the allegedly responsible for these adverse impacts initiates legal actions against claimants and states. This is, arbitration or strategic litigation against public participation (SLAPP) lodged by the allegedly responsible of the adverse impacts. Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far) The results of Curiae Virides will shed light on the dynamics and outcomes of a growing trend of going to court to protect ecosystems. Curiae Virides research is more prominent today than when the proposal was submitted in 2019. So far, no similar interdisciplinary approach with mixed methodologies has been developed. The Curiae Virides dataset contains around 50 variables that shed light on the option of triggering courts to solve urgent ecological problems. The results will go beyond the state of the art in disciplines such as Law, Law and Economics (where sustainability aspects have not reached the agenda) and Environmental Justice (where the analysis of court outcomes has not been integrated or combined with legal and quantitative methodologies).Curiae Virides adopts a unique approach to define the nature of claims that reach courts. This approach allows to identify the paths of claims grounded on potential impacts and claims grounded on actual hazards or on materialized harm, which will contribute to conceptualize on issues such as effectiveness of the judiciary to solve global problems or dilemmas between court congestion and improvement of policies, or the impact of empowering civil society to take active part in the solution of the environmental crises, and whether courts are agents of change in these crises curiae-virides-rgb.jpg
