Protect What Matters: Law in Action - a keynote speech from Laura Clarke

I’ve just returned from a work trip to the Philippines.

There is no time for climate denial in the Philippines, no culture wars.

It contributes just 0.3% to global emissions, but is the 7th most impacted by climate change.

Typhoons, extreme heat, flooding, drought, and rising sea levels – are all severe, and all are increasing in intensity in terms of lives lost and damage done.

So in the Philippines, and as was clear in all my meetings: it is not a question of whether action should be taken – it’s how fast it can be done. So ClientEarth has been working, over the past years, to bring its legal expertise to bear in supporting the regulatory reform needed for the energy transition.

But while I was there, talking about the legal frameworks needed for green energy, the country was in crisis.

The Government declared a national emergency, due to the war in in the Middle East, the blocking of the Straits of Hormuz, and the severe impact on the country’s energy supply. It has had an almost 100% increase in gasoline and diesel prices, which impacts everything: electricity, transport, agriculture, consumer goods. And with the country’s most vulnerable populations – the urban poor, and off-grid communities – suffering most.

And all from a conflict, far away, in which it played no part.

So there is a double injustice at play: countries like the Philippines are the most exposed to economic shocks they did not create, and the least able to absorb them. Just as they are on the frontline of climate impacts that they did not create – and the least able to respond.

And what is playing out in the Philippines is playing out, in different ways, across the world.

The System We Built

So what is the cause of this deep, double injustice? Our fossil fuel energy system.

Fossil fuels are at once driving climate change and damage in the Philippines – economic damage, loss of life. And holding the country’s economy hostage.

The Middle East conflict shows us, yet again, how exposed our energy system leaves us.

We have built a system that depends on fuels concentrated in specific regions, transported through narrow and vulnerable routes, and priced on global markets that react instantly to

disruption.

So when conflict escalates in one part of the world, the consequences are felt everywhere. That’s the system we’ve built.

Estimates of the Global GDP losses from the ongoing conflict range from 0.54% of global GDP if the conflict ends now, to more than 3.15% of global GDP if the war continues.

Opponents of climate action tell us we ‘can’t afford net zero’.

But of course the opposite is the case: we can’t afford to stay trapped in the fossil fuel status quo. And in fact the UK Climate Change Committee reported, just recently, that the cost of the UK getting to Net Zero by 2050 is the same as just one fossil fuel energy shock.

All of us here know that renewable energy is cleaner, safer and now – mostly – cheaper than fossil fuels. It is also less vulnerable to geopolitical shocks: it is harder to bomb a windfarm, or hold the sun hostage. And crucially, it can be “home grown”, reducing dependence on a small number of global suppliers.

The only real path to energy security and sovereignty is through renewables.

Why – then – are we still SO dependent on fossil fuels?

Well, because of the multiple ways in which they are integrated into our economic and political systems.

Subsidies and Structural Risk

Let’s take subsidies, as an example. Globally, explicit fossil fuel subsidies reached around 1.5 trillion dollars in 2022.

Public money - tax payers’ money - is still being used to give fossil fuels an unfair advantage, delaying investment in cleaner alternatives, fuelling the climate crisis, and prolonging exposure to volatile global markets.

I am perennially amazed that there is not more outrage about this: that our money, tax payers money, is being used to accelerate a climate crisis that threatens our very being.

Imagine – for a moment – the good that could be done with $1.5tn a year. Education, health, world hunger…

Law as a tool for change

Subsidies are of course just one element of the perverse systems we have created – where we are dependent on the very thing that causes us harm.

The question, then, is how we change that system.

And a big part of the answer is the law. The law, used in the right way, at the right time, can

drive the progressive change we need for a better future.

It can change the rules that shape how the system operates.

It can hold governments and polluters accountable

And it can equip people with the tools they need to drive change from the community level up.

We’ve seen this before, of course.

We saw it with suffrage. With civil rights. With marriage equality.

In each case, progress didn’t come from law alone, or from public pressure alone – it came from both. Public outrage and campaigning shifted what was politically possible, and legal frameworks then locked that change in, further shaping norms, incentives and expectations.

Climate change is now at that same point.

Law becomes the way societies turn intent into obligation — and durable change.

And it is increasingly being used to say: climate harm is not abstract, and climate action is a question of duty, not discretion.

This is the space ClientEarth has been working in for nearly two decades, using the law to protect people and the planet, bringing legal cases, helping to build the legal frameworks for broader change, and supporting people around the world in using the law to defend the environment and uphold their rights.

Since our inception, we have stopped major fossil fuel developments; closed the space for spurious green claims with greenwashing cases, supported governments with environmental legislation, and worked with communities across the world to protect forests and oceans, and hold polluters to account.

The ICJ Opinion

We’ve been doing all this to play our part in changing the way the system operates. And last year, the world’s highest court gave a decision that gave the legal climate movement a massive shot in the arm.

In a momentous decision, in July 2025, the International Court of Justice, affirmed that action on climate change is legal requirement.

This decision from the ICJ didn’t come from nowhere: it was the culmination of a journey begun when, in 2019, a group of students in a classroom in the Pacific asked a simple question.

What are governments legally required to do – under international law - about climate change?

With the support of Vanuatu they built a movement, and carried that question to the United Nations, and ultimately to the highest court in the world. And the court responded.

The Court made clear that states have a duty under international law to cooperate in addressing climate change.

It recognised that countries that have contributed the most to historic emissions carry a greater responsibility to act

And that a healthy environment underpins the enjoyment of human rights protected under international law.

It was also clear:

That governments are obliged to regulate the climate impacts of companies operating within their jurisdictions,

And that failing to curb fossil fuel production and consumption, approving new projects, or continuing to subsidise fossil fuels, could constitute internationally unlawful acts.

To sum up: the ICJ decision made clear that climate action is not a question of political discretion. It is a legal obligation.

Of course the ICJ AO is non binding. But it is an authoritative articulation of what international law requires – and it will be used by Ministers, judges and prosecutors around the world.

It will influence climate policies, international climate negotiations, and opens new pathways for climate litigation against governments. In short, it strengthens all those who seek to use the law to drive change.

Positive tipping points

And it can help us get to the positive tipping points faster.

It strengthens – for example - the basis for legal action and campaigns to challenge subsidies, the continued use of public money to support fossil fuels.

We are increasingly seeing legal cases about whether public money can lawfully be spent in ways that entrench pollution, when governments have legal obligations to reduce emissions and protect people from harm. CE and Collectiv Nourrir won a case last year challenging the Commission’s approval of France’s Common Agricultural Policy, and we’re challenging German subsidies for new gas.

And when those cases succeed, when environmentally harmful subsidies are withdrawn or redirected, markets respond quickly. Investment shifts. The playing field levels for renewable energy.

And you have a tipping point.

The ICJ opinion also reinforces the principle that those responsible for environmental harm should bear the cost of addressing it. The polluter pays.

Historically companies have – largely – been able to operate without accounting for the true costs of the damage they cause to the environment. They prioritise private profit over public good, and the damage is borne by local communities and taxpayers, by the environment.

But polluter pays litigation seeks to shift that accountability. Let us go back to the Philippines, where the victims of Typhoon Odette, which killed 400 people, injured 100, and caused damage to the tune of $570 million – are suing Shell for the proportion of the damage done – arguing that Shell’s contribution to pollution and climate change increased the intensity of the Typhoon.

These cases are novel. They may not – yet – succeed. But let’s be clear. Polluter pays litigation, class actions and damages claims – when they scale – will change the calculations of polluting businesses, change their commercial viability and business model, and level the playing field for progressive business players.

Building Agency and Driving Change

So as we look out at the world around us it is easy to feel powerless, too small to make a difference. It can still feel as though we are locked into a system built on fossil fuels, where decisions taken far away shape what people can afford, how they live, and how secure they feel.

But around the world people are taking their future in their own hands. They are asserting their agency, their power, in holding governments and corporates to account, and driving change.

We see it in the communities advocating and litigating for clean air – that has led to dramatic improvements in air quality around the world.

In the Klimaseniorinnen, who won a landmark case at the ECHR, arguing that the Swiss Government had a human rights obligation to address climate change.

The youth in Hawaii, who won a lawsuit that then required the government to decarbonise its transport system.

Communities in Spain – who last year won a case focused on the health and human rights impacts of the pollution from industrial pig farming.

Energy communities – who are organising to build local, renewable energy capacity from the ground up.

And quietly – without fuss – the people working with and in governments and authorities, in the Philippines and around the world, working painstakingly to get the right laws and

regulatory frameworks in place to enable the change we need.

The progress we see comes from people, organisations and communities mobilising.

People who have decided that the future can be different.

And that is what gives me hope. The Pacific Islanders who secured the momentous decision from the ICJ last year were not powerful or rich – but they knew, first hand, what was at stake. And they used the law to drive change – from grass roots to the highest court in the world. And they shifted the baseline.

Law is not a fast nor a quick fix.

It requires courage and perseverance.

But it provides stability and long-term thinking: which is what this moment requires.

And in this room, at this conference, and across the world, more and more people are resolute and determined. They know that a different future is possible.

And they are working to help build it. We know that change needs to come from all sectors of society. But the law, used in the right way, can catalyse that change. It can get us to the positive tipping points faster, and it can change our systems for the better.

Thank you.