Connecting climate science, law, and justice for planetary wellbeing

At the Second Conference on Attribution Science and Climate Law at Columbia University, Beijer Institute Director Emily Boyd joined leading climate scientists, legal scholars, economists, public health researchers, and social scientists to explore how advances in attribution science are reshaping climate law, governance and justice. Below she shares her reflections from the conference and on the developments in this field of research:

”Attribution science compares the climate conditions we are experiencing today to what the Earth’s climate would be like without human influence, making it increasingly possible to quantify the extent to which human-caused climate change influences specific weather events and long-term environmental trends.

As climate litigation expands worldwide, these advances are becoming central to questions of responsibility and accountability.

At the conference, I presented a forthcoming paper, When Suffering Counts, which asks a fundamental question: whose suffering is recognised when climate harms are assessed? While climate damages are often measured in economic terms, many of the most significant impacts are non-economic, including losses of nature, culture, identity, place, wellbeing, and social relationships. As attribution science advances, ensuring these experiences are recognised in law and policy becomes increasingly important.

I also discussed a recent Global Environmental Change paper on intersectionality and climate litigation, co-authored with Elisabeth Schill, (Lund University, Sweden). The paper explores how greater attention to intersecting dimensions of vulnerability and inequality can strengthen access to climate justice. For example, rather than treating people as equally affected by climate change, an intersectional approach examines how factors such as gender, ethnicity, age, disability, income, and legal status combine to shape both climate risks and access to legal remedies. This can help courts and policymakers better identify who is disproportionately harmed by climate impacts and ensure that climate policies and legal decisions do not reinforce existing inequalities.

What left me most hopeful was not simply the rapid progress in attribution science, but the growing recognition that understanding climate change means understanding people, nature, and justice together. As these fields continue to converge, they offer new possibilities for responding to planetary change in ways that are both scientifically rigorous and socially meaningful.

These discussions strongly resonate with ongoing work at the Beijer Institute, where we are exploring how research on planetary wellbeing can better connect ecological change, institutions, governance, health, and justice.

The conference reinforced an important message: advancing climate science must go hand in hand with advancing climate justice. As our ability to attribute climate impacts grows, so too must our ability to recognise the full range of losses experienced by people and nature, and to develop responses that support both ecological integrity and human wellbeing.”