Climpact — Charting the Landscape of Climate Litigation Impacts

Research

Roadmap

The phases and milestones of Climpact's study of climate-litigation impacts — from framework design to a public, open-access database.

The road to an open-access impact database

Climpact runs in deliberate phases — from methodological fine-tuning, through two subsequent research lines and their chains of impact, to a public open-access database . Here is the whole arc, and exactly where we are right now .

  • Kick-off — Phase 00 — Establishment of the team and the analytical framework , plus methodological fine-tuning of the standardized instruments before the empirical work begins.
  • RL-A · Government target — Research Line A — The first empirical research line , studying climate litigation that targets governments and public authorities . — Empirical analysis on the same dataset of cases, using different disciplinary methodologies and sources Record and capture findings through standardized ICICs and ACICs across cases and clusters Constant interdisciplinary integration and use of peer review for intermediate findings
  • Process tracing & Chain of Impact Report (RL-A) — Chain of impact · A — At the close of Research Line A, process tracing reconstructs the causal mechanisms linking litigation to its impacts — distinguishing genuine effects from mere correlation — and the findings are compiled into a Chain of Impact Report (COI-R).
  • RL-B · Private / corporate target — Research Line B — The second empirical research line , mirroring RL-A on climate litigation that targets private and corporate actors . — Empirical analysis on the same dataset of cases, using different disciplinary methodologies and sources Record and capture findings through standardized ICICs and ACICs across cases and clusters Constant interdisciplinary integration and use of peer review for intermediate findings
  • Process tracing & Chain of Impact Report (RL-B) — Chain of impact · B — At the close of Research Line B, process tracing reconstructs the causal mechanisms behind private and corporate climate litigation, compiled into a second Chain of Impact Report (COI-R) .
  • Open-access database — Phase 03 — All research outputs — ICICs, ACICs, COI-Reports and supporting materials — integrated into an open-access database , designed to visualize impact pathways , map connections between cases and clusters, and enable cross-referencing across jurisdictions and case types .

The roadmap evolves as the project advances — follow Climpact Radar for milestone updates, intermediate findings and open calls .