CLIMATE LITIGATION, HUMAN RIGHTS AND TRANSNATIONAL CORPORATIONS

The aim of this paper is to understand how climate litigation may act as a mechanism to enforce the human rights protection in face of violations by transnational corporations. Initially, we reflect on the link between cli-mate change, human rights, and enterprises. Climate litigation is then ap-proached as an instrument for the enforcement of human rights, discussing its impacts and expansion. Finally, the case Milieudefensie et al. v. Royal Dutch Shell is reviewed, and the action of the mechanism is discussed considering the violations arising from business activities. Adopting in-ductive reasoning, the qualitative research encompasses theory and praxis and brings together the techniques of document analysis, literature review and case study. Thus, climate litigation is an important instrument with extraterritorial effects for the protection of human rights in face of corpo-rate actions, especially given the role it plays in holding transnational cor-porations liable: a global challenge that has been increasingly discussed. However, we concluded that the mechanism is not sufficient to solve the problem of liability, nor of human rights violations, making international