• Anni: 2026 – 2029
• Coordinatore: Anna Berti Suman

Abstract

Summary of the project: What can judges learn about climate change from climate-affected people? How is this knowledge entering court cases? Which effects does the narration of lived climate impacts have in such cases? Mounting concern about climate change has urged people to challenge laws, policies and projects through climate litigation, i.e., court cases aimed at setting case law precedent to advance climate change mitigation efforts from responsible entities such as governments. Although most of these cases rely on evidence from institutional science, recent cases – such as KlimaSeniorinnen et al v Switzerland and Duarte et al v Portugal et al – present an interesting emphasis on the perspective of the affected people and their experience of climate impacts on everyday life. At present, however, the role of ‘personal narratives’ (i.e., accounts of lived climate impacts) in climate litigation is largely unresearched.
The project ‘PersoNa – Personal Narratives in climate litigation’ will study systematically the emerging use of personal narratives in climate litigation and their impacts on judges, lawyers, the parties, and on broader societal engagement with such litigation. In addition, the project will explore under which conditions personal narratives are recognized as credible evidence to ground standing or demonstrate harm and will identify barriers that such evidence may encounter. It will deploy a challenging inquiry based on a combination of literature and legal review, ethnography, Critical Discourse Analysis applied to societal discussions, and Text Mining applied to court rulings. The time range of interest will encompass climate litigation initiated in the last 15 years, taking as start date the filing of the milestone Urgenda Foundation v Netherlands case in 2013, which inspired further climate litigation. The geographical coverage will be global, although ethnographic research will be performed only in 10 locations.
This frontier and interdisciplinary project will make a step ahead in our understanding of the role that personal narratives can play in advancing climate litigation and in fostering engagement. The envisaged impact is to encourage innovative thinking about the kinds of evidence that might be deployed in climate litigation and to grasp the societal dynamics underlying the presentation of such evidence.
Reference to some preparatory research published open access and performed for scoping the PersoNa project: Berti Suman A, Burnette A. A place for people’s knowledge in climate evidence: Exploring civic evidence in climate litigation. RECIEL. 2024; 33(3): 383-396. doi: 10.1111/reel.12552
The first calls for two postdoc recruited on the project: https://www.fisppa.unipd.it/bando-2026cr01-conferimento-n-2-contratti-ricerca-valere-su-fondo-italiano-scienza-2022-%E2%80%93-2023-fis-2 (deadline 17.02.26, h 13:00)