Who pays for climate breakdown? Banks, financed emissions, and the road to climate accountability

Date:: 2 April 2026, 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm
Venue:: Sumeet Valrani Theatre, 1.01 CBG, Centre Building, WC2A 3LJ

As the world’s biggest banks continue to pour billions into fossil fuels—nearly US$8 trillion since the Paris Agreement—a pressing legal frontier is emerging: are financial institutions that make climate-destructive projects possible legally accountable for the harms they help cause? Join us for the launch of the LSE/ClientEarth Report that stems from the Sustainability Law & Policy Clinic project, on which a team of twelve students from across five LSE departments have worked throughout this academic year. Working at the cutting edge of climate litigation and financial accountability, the Clinic has undertaken an interdisciplinary investigation spanning two interrelated strands of research. First, we examined how courts around the world have grappled with the thorny question of legal causation and scientific attribution in climate cases against major emitters—whether states or corporations—asking what legal tests, attribution evidence, and litigation strategies have proved most compelling. Second, we turned the lens to banks and financial institutions, mapping how litigants and civil society have sought to quantify ‘financed emissions’ and articulate the responsibility of banks for their unique role in enabling climate breakdown. Together, these strands lay the legal groundwork for what may become a landmark methodological study. Taking a ‘Heede for banks’ approach, modelled on the groundbreaking study that traced global emissions to a handful of carbon majors, this work seeks to guide the development of a methodology for attributing a justifiable share of global emissions to the world’s most systemically important financial institutions.

Students will present their findings, followed by a discussion with external experts on strategic litigation, climate attribution science, and sustainable finance, offering a rare opportunity for open dialogue on one of the most consequential and innovative questions in climate governance today. Whether you are a legal scholar, a climate advocate, a finance professional, or simply a concerned citizen, we warmly invite you to attend, listen, challenge, and contribute to this vital conversation. The event will close with a drinks reception, offering further opportunity for conversation and exchange.

Student presenters

Farah Alaradi (BA in Law & Anthropology)
Sahra Paucar Bejarano (MSc Environmental Regulation)
Nehanshu Rao Chetty (MSc in Law and Finance)
Mary Cline (MSc in Human Rights and Politics)
Pablo Sebastián Díez Pinto (LLM)
Zacharia El Khamloussy (LLM)
Leong Yue Andrew Ko (LLM)
Susie McCluskey (LLM)
Noreen Nakirinya (LLM)
Georgia Skapoulli (LLM)
Tomas Vladyka (LLB)
An-Ya Yap (LLB)

Discussants

Robert Clarke and Alex Bennett (Lawyers in ClientEarth’s Accountable Finance team and project partners)
Pablo Felmer Roa (Strategic Litigator and Campaigner, Member of the Board of Directors at Reclaim Finance)
Léa Miomandre (Finance Analyst at Reclaim Finance)
Jasper Blom (senior policy officer focusing on financial sector regulation at Milieudefensie)
Maria Carvalho (Head of Climate Economics and Data at NatWest Group)
Tom Alcoran (Senior Analyst at InfluenceMap)
Joana Setzer (Associate Professor at GRI & Co-lead of GSoS Theme 3)

Chair: Marie Petersmann (Assistant Professor at LSE Law School & Director of the SLPC)

The LSE Supervision Team of the LSE will also be present and includes: Noah Walker-Crawford (Research Fellow at GRI and Strand A Supervisor); Joy Reyes (Policy Officer at GRI and Strand A Supervisor); Nicholas Petkov(Research Assistant at GRI and Strand A Supervisor); Eoin Jackson (PhD Researcher at LSE Law School and Strand A Supervisor); Agnieszka Smoleńska (Senior Policy Fellow at CETEx and Strand B Supervisor); Tiffanie Chan(Policy Analyst at GRI/CETEx and Strand B Supervisor).

This event is kindly supported by the LSE Global School of Sustainability (GSoS).