C2LI (Climate Change Legal Initiative) aims to tackle global warming by helping private and public sector organisations understand and adhere to climate change-related law.

C2LI has created the Climate Change Litigation Knowledge Hub. The open-access online platform takes climate change litigation cases ordinarily confined to books, academic material and court documents, and translates them into short, plain language summaries, making them accessible to all.

By increasing knowledge and understanding of these cases and climate related legal developments C2LI seeks to support organisations’ strategic decision-making and ensure legislation designed to protect the environment, drive sustainability and reduce greenhouse gas emissions is adhered to.

Established by Dr Kate McKenzie, Dr Francesco Sindico and Amelia Burnette, of the University’s School of Law, as a community interest company, C2LI is fully asset-locked, which means that profits or assets are not distributed outside of the company. Instead, all profits are re-invested back into supporting the company’s social and environmental vision.

Dr McKenzie, chief executive officer of C2LI, said: “Climate change is impacting every area of life, and every area of law and we are in a critical decade to take decisive action. To get to where we need to be – keeping global warming down – the law is a really powerful tool to get us there.

“Anyone who wants to do business in this world needs to stay on top of climate change law.

“For example, a company opening a new business in a new country might not possess legal expertise in that jurisdiction and have little knowledge of historical climate related litigation or upcoming legislation that might affect its operations or compliance. We can provide that expertise and help ensure the company follows the law thereby reducing its insurance risk and also taking climate positive actions.”

The Knowledge Hub covers 30 countries, with the help of a global network of legal experts, but the team aims to add 20 more this year and to have global coverage within five years. Their focus is on countries that do not see a lot of climate litigation cases raised, which may indicate legal or political barriers.

Dr McKenzie said: “It has taken us the better part of four or five years to get to 30 countries. It’s time and resource intensive work, and we also ultimately want the information to be provided in the five official United Nations languages.”