Ecocide, attribution science and the emerging case for corporate liability
Scientists can now trace specific economic losses back to named corporate emitters. As attribution science matures, the legal case for holding companies responsible for environmental destruction is becoming harder to contest.
The collapse of scientific uncertainty as a defence
For decades, the central legal defence available to companies facing environmental liability claims was scientific uncertainty. Even where damage was documented and causation plausible, the complexity of ecological systems and the diffuse nature of most corporate environmental impacts made it difficult for plaintiffs to establish the specific causal chain required by most legal frameworks. A company could acknowledge that climate change was occurring, that its operations contributed to greenhouse gas concentrations and that environmental damage was escalating – and still argue that the causal chain from its specific emissions to a specific plaintiff's specific loss was too attenuated to support liability. That defence is losing its foundations faster than most corporate legal teams have registered.
How attribution science works
Attribution science is the field of research that quantifies the relationship between specific human activities and specific environmental outcomes. At its foundation is the discipline of climate attribution – the use of physical climate models to determine how much a particular weather event, temperature trend, or ecosystem change was influenced by human-induced greenhouse gas concentrations. This has been an established scientific field since at least the early 2000s and the quality and specificity of its outputs have improved dramatically with advances in computational power, model resolution and observational data.
The critical frontier in the last decade has been the step from attributing climate change to human activity in general, to attributing specific environmental outcomes to the emissions of specific named companies. Previous attribution models relied on concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases – a metric that cannot be traced to individual sources. The breakthrough has been in simulating emissions directly, allowing researchers to model what warming would have occurred in a counterfactual world where a specific company's emissions did not exist and comparing it to the world that actually occurred.
The landmark 2025 Nature study
A landmark study published in Nature in April 2025 established an end-to-end attribution framework that traces warming, extreme weather events and measurable economic losses directly back to the emissions of individual companies, using their own reported Scope 1 and Scope 3 data. The study's senior author, Professor Justin Mankin of Dartmouth College, stated: 'We argue that the scientific case for climate liability is closed, even if the future of these cases remains an open question.' The framework estimated that extreme heat linked to just 111 companies cost the global economy $28 trillion from 1991 to 2020, with $9 trillion of those losses attributable to the five top-emitting firms. The highest-emitting investor-owned company in the study may be responsible for between $791 billion and $3.6 trillion in heat-related losses over that period.[1]
The study's methodology is significant for legal purposes because it is transparent, peer-reviewed and reproducible – exactly the characteristics that courts require of expert scientific evidence. It does not rely on proprietary models or contested assumptions. It builds on established, published methods for each step of the attribution chain, from company-level emissions to atmospheric warming to regional temperature change to economic losses. The result is a framework that can be presented in court as mainstream science, not advocacy.
The Carbon Majors Database
The framework relies in part on the Carbon Majors Database, which traces 1,388 GtCO₂e of cumulative historical emissions from 1854 through 2023 to 180 named industrial producers. This database is already embedded in US state legislation. New York and Vermont have passed Climate Superfund Acts requiring fossil fuel companies responsible for significant emissions to pay into state funds for climate damage repair and adaptation, with the Carbon Majors Database as the proposed tool to quantify each company's liability. Legal advocacy groups have also cited it to support potential criminal charges against fossil fuel executives for reckless endangerment.[2]
Lliuya v. RWE – attribution science in the courtroom
Attribution science was applied directly in the landmark Lliuya v. RWE case, decided by the Higher Regional Court of Hamm in Germany in May 2025. The plaintiff, Peruvian farmer Saúl Luciano Lliuya, argued that RWE's historic carbon emissions had contributed to melting glaciers above his home in Huaraz, Peru, raising the risk of a catastrophic glacial lake outburst flood. He sought partial damages proportionate to RWE's share of global industrial emissions since 1751 – approximately 0.47% – as calculated using the Carbon Majors database.[3]
The court accepted the attribution science methodology. It confirmed that, based on attribution science, it could compare RWE's contribution to global emissions to the causal contributions of other companies and countries, and that operations of RWE's subsidiaries were properly attributed to RWE as parent company. The claim ultimately failed because Lliuya could not establish a sufficiently imminent flood risk to his specific property – but the court confirmed, for the first time in a European higher court, that major emitters can in principle be held civilly liable under national law for climate-related harms caused anywhere in the world. The scientific foundation for that liability was not challenged.[3][4]
The implications for corporate data
Legal academics Rupert Stuart-Smith, Friederike Otto and Thom Wetzer have published detailed analysis of how attribution science supports causal argumentation in climate litigation, noting that 'climate science has a central role to play in many cases related to climate change' and that 'as the demands on courts to resolve issues related to climate change grow, judges are asked to adjudicate claims that introduce climate science to demonstrate that defendants' actions interfere with rights owed to claimants.'[5]
The implications for corporate governance are stark. A company's disclosed emissions data – especially its Scope 3 data – its supply chain traceability records, its environmental impact assessments and its management system documentation are all becoming potential evidence in a legal framework that is moving towards corporate accountability for environmental harm at a level of specificity that was not previously possible. Inaccurate, incomplete, or unverified emissions data is not merely a disclosure shortcoming. In a litigation context, it is a gap in the evidentiary record that prosecutors and plaintiffs will exploit. Boards that understand this are beginning to ask not just 'are we compliant?' but 'can we demonstrate, with independently verified evidence, that we understood our environmental impacts, managed them to an appropriate standard and disclosed them accurately?'
References
[1] Callahan, C.W. and Mankin, J.S., 'Carbon majors and the scientific case for climate liability', Nature, vol. 640, pp. 893–901 (April 2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-08751-3. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08751-3
[2] InfluenceMap, 'Carbon Majors: 2023 Data Update', including analysis of Climate Superfund applications. https://influencemap.org/briefing/The-Carbon-Majors-Database-2023-Update-31397
[3] Columbia Law School Climate Law Blog, 'What Lliuya v. RWE Means for Climate Change Loss and Damage Claims' (19 June 2025). https://blogs.law.columbia.edu/climatechange/2025/06/19/what-lliuya-v-rwe-means-for-climate-change-loss-and-damage-claims/
[4] Loyens & Loeff, 'ESG Litigation Update: The Notable (German) Lliuya v. RWE Ruling and Some Dutch Legal Perspectives' (2025). https://www.loyensloeff.com/insights/news--events/news/esg-litigation-update-the-notable-german-lliuya-v.-rwe-ruling-and-some-dutch-legal-perspectives/
[5] Stuart-Smith, R., Otto, F.E.L. and Wetzer, T., 'Liability for Climate Change Impacts: the Role of Climate Attribution Science', in De Jong et al. (eds), Corporate Responsibility and Liability in Relation to Climate Change (Intersentia, 2022). Available at SSRN. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4226257