The Climate Trial: Law and Justice on a Melting Planet
Hosted in collaboration with the ASA Climate Anthropology Network.
Join us for the launch of The Climate Trial, a compelling new book by Noah Walker‑Crawford that offers an unprecedented look inside the landmark climate lawsuit Lliuya v. RWE. The book traces the story of Saúl Luciano Lliuya, a mountain guide and farmer from Huaraz, Peru, whose community faces escalating flood risks as the glacial lake Palcacocha grows due to climate change. Although the German energy company RWE has never operated in Peru, Luciano Lliuya sought to hold the major emitter accountable for its contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions — pursuing a ground-breaking legal strategy that helped establish the principle that large polluters can be held liable for climate‑related harms. Drawing on years of ethnographic fieldwork and involvement with the case, Walker‑Crawford follows the people, scientific debates, and legal arguments that shaped this unprecedented transnational lawsuit. More than a legal narrative, The Climate Trial is a deeply human story about responsibility, justice, and what it means to be a “good neighbour” in an interconnected and warming world.
The event will feature a moderated panel discussion bringing together an anthropologist, a climate scientist, and a legal practitioner to explore the book’s core themes and the broader implications of climate litigation today. Following the lecture, guests are welcome to join a reception, where they can purchase copies of the book and have them signed by the author
Meet our speakers & chair
Speakers
Dr Noah Walker-Crawford is a publicly engaged researcher and anthropologist who studies climate litigation from a socio-legal perspective. He leads the project ‘Bridging the evidentiary gap: climate attribution in the courtroom’ which examines how climate change attribution science shapes litigation. He helped initiate Luciano Lliuya v RWE, a ground-breaking lawsuit by a Peruvian farmer against a German energy company over its contribution to climate change impacts in the Andes and has played a key role in developing the evidentiary strategy.
Dr Roda Verheyen is an environmental lawyer with many years of experience in international environmental law and policy and climate change campaigning in Europe. She has written her Ph.D. on climate change damage in international law and now has her own private law firm specialized in environmental, energy and planning law in Hamburg, Germany. She represented Saúl Luciano Lliuya in the proceedings against RWE.
Dr Hannah Knox is Max Gluckman Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester. Her work focuses on the anthropology of technology, infrastructure, and climate change, and her recent books include Thinking Like a Climate: Governing a City in Times of Environmental Change and Ethnography for a Data Saturated World.
Dr Friederike Otto is Professor in Climate Science at the Centre for Environmental Policy in Imperial College London. She leads World Weather Attribution (WWA), an international effort to analyse and communicate the possible influence of climate change on extreme weather events. Fredi has been an author at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) The Scientific Basis, which was published in August 2021, she is also an author on the IPCC’s final report of the sixth assessment cycle.
Chair
Dr Joana Setzer is an Associate Professorial Research Fellow at the GRI. Her main areas of expertise are climate litigation and global environmental governance. She leads the GRI’s Climate Change Laws of the World project – the most comprehensive global resource on climate policy and legislation. She is also co-Chair of the Climate Accountability working group of the Climate Social Science Network and is Co-Lead of the Mobilising legal, political, and governance systems theme of LSE’s Global School of Sustainability.
How to attend – in person
To attend this event in person, please register in advance here.
How to attend – online
To attend this event via Zoom, please register in advance here.