Chapter 4 explores the intricacies of the legal principle of standing, its role in climate litigation, and how it impacts the ability of parties to bring climate change-related lawsuits to trial. The author discusses interpretations of standing across different jurisdictions, such as the United States, New Zealand, and countries in Europe, and explains how these interpretations can either impede or facilitate climate litigation. He distils emerging best practice from this analysis, providing an insightful guide for future climate lawsuits. The author then identifies emerging best practice in interpreting standing rules in a flexible manner, thus allowing a broader range of actors to bring climate-related lawsuits and enhancing access to justice.

Chapter 15 on State Responsibility provides an in-depth exploration of the circumstances under which States can be held responsible for climate change. The author starts by outlining the fundamental principles and conditions for State responsibility under international law. Her analysis bridges the gap between international and domestic law, shedding light on how each legal sphere influences the shape and contours of State responsibility in relation to climate change. Further, she enriches her analysis with insights drawn from key climate cases that have tested the limits of State responsibility. These cases reveal how courts and quasi-judicial bodies are grappling with the challenges of attributing climate harms to State actions and omissions, and the implications of holding States accountable for these harms. In distilling emerging best practice, the author identifies innovative judicial interpretations and legal strategies that have expanded the ambit of State responsibility in climate litigation.

The Conclusion summarizes the main arguments in the book and discusses to what extent the factors that shaped regime outcomes in the early twentieth century mattered post-1929. It also examines the broader theoretical implications of the book, analyzes the extent to which the arguments work in Mexico and Central America, and lays out an agenda for future research on historical democratization.

Chapter 1 introduces The Cambridge Handbook on Climate Litigation. The editors provide an overview of the development of climate litigation and its landmark victories, including the Urgenda, Leghari, and KlimaSeniorinnen decisions. They illuminate how the Handbook will help judges, lawyers, scholars, and other actors navigate the labyrinth of legal intricacies that define the rapidly evolving climate change litigation landscape. To shed light on the methodology of the publication, the chapter details the empirical basis for the work, which involved an exhaustive cataloguing of climate litigation case law to date. This is followed by an explanation of the analytical framework that underpins each of the chapters – a framework focused on distilling ‘emerging best practice’. The latter portion of the chapter details each section of the Handbook and summarises the analyses of the contributing authors. Ultimately, the Handbook aims to inspire dialogue as well as robust and innovative legal reasoning in future climate cases.

Chapter 2 provides a primer on climate science for legal practitioners and scholars, and it offers essential scientific background to help readers understand the context of climate litigation. Based on reports of the latest (sixth) assessment cycle of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the authors begin with an overview of the components of the climate system, the carbon cycle, and the greenhouse gas effect. The second section looks backwards to show the influence that humans have had on climate change to date, while the third section focuses on the current impacts of climate change. The fourth section looks forward and presents future emissions scenarios and projected warming and impacts, highlighting both fast and slow onset climate changes. The final section evaluates progress toward the goals set in the Paris Agreement and explores strategies for stabilising global temperatures.

This chapter focuses on systemic factors in healthcare systems and how these can promote qualities such as mindfulness, awareness, resilience, and compassion. Too often, health systems do not promote these values at the organisational level despite the best efforts of individual healthcare workers. With attention and awareness, however, this can be remedied. This chapter examines the themes of compassionate leadership in healthcare organisations, resilience in these settings, and specific approaches that healthcare professionals can take to increase compassion across the healthcare systems in which we work. These steps include: (a) leading by example to promote compassionate behaviour for better care; (b) supporting the well-being of colleagues and staff we manage; (c) fostering open communication across clinical and managerial teams; (d) including patients and families in decision-making and valuing their perspectives; (e) promoting teamwork and collaboration that are inclusive, adaptive, and resilient; (f) recognising and rewarding compassionate care, both formally and informally; and (g) making self-compassion a key organisational value: health care is challenging, we are all human, and self-compassion is the basis of compassion for others.

This chapter focuses on resilience and compassion, starting by examining the relevance of resilience in healthcare, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic. The chapter notes that while a certain amount of resilience is helpful and even essential, resilience depends on not only the personal characteristics of each healthcare worker, but also the conditions in which they work. Relevant factors include the structure and function of teams, models of organisation, quality of leadership, and resources. These matters have an enormous influence on individual experiences, attitudes, and behaviour, and on the levels of resilience that are required and accessible in the workplace, as well as compassion. This chapter considers the concepts of ‘compassion fatigue’ and ‘burnout’, and outlines barriers to, and facilitators of, compassionate care. Systemic challenges include competing system demands, time constraints, inadequate resources, communication issues, poor emotional connections with the broader healthcare system, and the perception and/or reality of staff not being valued for the care they provide. These are themes that resonate with many people who work in large healthcare systems where organisational challenges loom large, often distracting focus from day-to-day patient care. This chapter also examines the roles of mindfulness and meditation in navigating these challenges.

Certain skills support compassion and help us to develop and sustain compassion even in circumstances that are far from ideal. Against this background, recent decades have seen a remarkable growth of research in this field. There is, in particular, a welcome flourishing in the area of compassion studies and compassion-based therapies, which form the focus of this chapter. Paul Gilbert, in particular, has developed compassion-focused therapy (CFT) which is outlined further by the Compassionate Mind Foundation and available in many countries around the world, as well as online. The Compassionate Mind Foundation advances an evolutionary and bio-psycho-social informed approach to compassion, and this forms the basis of CFT and ‘Compassionate Mind Training’. This chapter starts by exploring the origins of CFT and key attributes for the cultivation of compassion, before considering compassion and shame in clinical contexts. Shame can be an especially powerful emotion with a profound effect on health-related behaviour. Compassion can be a valuable way to address this issue. This chapter examines CFT in practice and notes the growing evidence base to support its use. The chapter concludes with further reflections on compassion and self-compassion as key skills and vital resources in healthcare.