Climate Litigation in Times of Overshoot: Democracy, Legal Boundaries, and Economic Modelling
On July 2nd, Christina Eckes gave a keynote speech at the ESEE Conference, which brings together ecological economists from across Europe. The invited keynote speakers are deliberately not necessarily ecological economists, but are considered as “friends” to the field.
The keynote frames the climate crisis not only as a physical phenomenon, illustrated by extreme European heat, but also as a political and legal struggle over pace, distribution, legitimacy, and accountability. It presents climate litigation as a central mechanism through which this struggle is institutionalized, especially in Europe, where multilevel legal orders, human-rights reasoning, and constitutional norms have progressively narrowed state discretion.
The key message is that economic modelling often relies on an outdated baseline that treats ambition as primarily a matter of political willingness. This, despite the fact that treaties, climate science, and case law now impose increasingly concrete legal boundaries. She ends with a call for a so-called “rule-of-law modelling agenda” in which legal obligations, responsibility for past emissions, damages, cleanup, and the hidden costs of fossil-fuel dependence are built into scenario design rather than treated as afterthoughts.
