As governments’ climate policies fail to achieve the emission reductions that scientific targets demand, attention has turned to the courts. Activists worldwide and across all fifty U.S. states have filed lawsuits challenging government inaction on climate change. These suits are part of a modern trend towards rights-based climate litigation and are founded on principles of constitutional and human rights. Many courts are hesitant to grant broad relief implicating major policy decisions, which has led to mixed outcomes in court decisions.
In June 2024, however, climate litigants in Hawai‘i leveraged a settlement, instead of pursuing a judicial decision, allowing them to extract concrete climate commitments from the state government defendants in Navahine F. v. Hawai‘i Department of Transportation. In the settlement agreement, enforced by the Hawai‘i state court, the Department of Transportation agreed to implement an extensive list of actions to decarbonize the state transportation system on a specified time schedule, as well as establish a youth advisory council to oversee implementation. The settlement has rightfully been celebrated as a landmark agreement and lays a critical foundation for decarbonizing Hawai‘i’s transportation sector in a way that centers community participation and climate justice.
As one of the first instances of success in American climate litigation, Navahine demonstrates the potential of settlement in a climate litigant’s toolbox to maximize plaintiffs’ goals. This Note argues that settlement may provide an opportunity for climate litigants to obtain more concrete commitments from defendants than would otherwise be available through judicial resolution. Settlement may also advance climate justice goals by empowering plaintiffs to participate in crafting those commitments. Climate advocates should therefore look to the Navahine settlement as a potential model for using litigation to compel governments to mitigate climate change through just and effective policies.
