Methodology
C2LI is an initiative about climate litigation
In this first stage of the Initiative, most of the summaries build on the efforts leading to the book: “Comparative Climate Change Litigation. Beyond the Usual Suspects”. In this sense, book’s contributors are acting in the Initiative as National Rapporteurs. However, while the book also presented a scenario-focused methodology, its proposed scenarios differ from C2LI’s. For the latter, the six scenarios of the book were simplified into three (see here for more detailed information about the three scenarios). The C2LI summaries are not simply shortened versions of the book’s chapters, but redesigned pieces intended to offer more straightforward and accessible information about jurisdiction-specific climate change litigation scenarios to a broader public, beyond academia..
The task of summarising and also redesigning (and updating) the information originally contained in the book’s chapters was developed by the C2LI team in the following way*:
- a first draft by a Research Assistant and a Senior Research Assistant
- the draft was then reviewed by a Legal Analyst.
To guarantee the quality of the information provided by C2LI, draft summaries undertook a further two-step expert review:
- the draft was first reviewed by the National Rapporteur,
- it was then, where possible, reviewed also by a legal practitioner from the summary’s jurisdiction. They provided comments and insight on the content and clarity of the summary that were considered by our team before finalising the summary.
A final layer of reviews led to the final summary being published on the C2LI website:
- the national rapporteur was given a final opportunity to provide comments to the summary, as well as suggest any case law updates, which were researched by the C2LI case law committee.
- the C2LI director reviewed the summary one last time to ensure consistency across all summaries.
Some summaries, as well as the overall lay out of the C2LI website, was then tested by a focus group that provided further comments on the portal’s functionality in respect to the country summaries. For a future stage of C2LI and for jurisdictions not included in the Springer book, C2LI is actively recruiting new National Rapporteurs who will develop the basic information on the three C2LI scenarios. Moreover, the C2LI team is considering the possibility, on the one hand, to expand the range of the Initiative by translating it into other languages (Spanish in the first instance), on the other hand, to address new scenarios as climate litigation is continuously evolving.
*While every attempt is made for every summary to go through all layers of review, this is not always possible.