Theorising the Emergence of a Trans-National Climate Legal Consciousness

Climate litigation is increasingly used by vulnerable groups to resist state lack of action to address the climate and biodiversity crises. However, ordinary citizens and vulnerable groups often lack the means to go to court to claim their rights and search for justice, instead they interpret and use the law in everyday lives to solve conflicts and make sense of the legal institutions influencing their lives. This project investigates the ways (mechanisms) in which everyday accounts of the law, that are quiet and sometimes seen as non-political, can lead to collective legal mobilisation, social movements, organised resistance, shifts in social norms and ultimately to societal transformations. Using an action research methodology and trace back motives and everyday uses of the law among citizens that mobilised the law in landmark cases in Colombia and Sweden. By comparing these two different cases, we theorise the emergence of a transnational climate legal consciousness that is re-shaping the role of the law in everyday life with non-monetary values of nature, non-western identities, biodiversity, wellbeing and the hope for a better future for all.