Communities and individuals across the globe whose livelihoods and natural resources are harmed or threatened by business operations are using environmental litigation as a key strategic tool to assert their human rights. The past decade has seen a steady increase in lawsuits brought directly against companies to redress climate and other environmental harm. There have been some key wins and setbacks in courtrooms around the world and new drivers of action have emerged. These include shareholders bringing legal claims against the companies or private institutions in which they own shares (so-called shareholder litigation) and civil society organizations taking companies to court over environmental harm or supporting litigation efforts by others...

Civil society organizations have brought numerous legal actions against companies to seek redress for human rights abuses resulting from environmental harm. For example, the Rio Sonora Basin Committee in Mexico, a community group of 600 local residents, partnered with Latin American human rights organization PODER in 2014 to sue Grupo México over water pollution.
 
The Committee and PODER filed seven class action lawsuits against Grupo México and the Mexican Government. This was after the company failed to fulfill promises to build water treatment plants, and to finance a trust fund for the community, over a spill of 40,000 cubic meters of copper sulphate into the communal water source. The lawsuits alleged a violation of the right to water, requesting that the defendants redress environmental harm and guarantee the community’s right to participate in spill remediation plans. As a result, the government re-tested dozens of water sources near the river and promised to open a medical clinic to treat any ailments community members experience as a result of the spill. In January 2020, the Second Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice ordered the Rio Sonora Trust remain open, a mechanism to help the remediation and clean-up process.
 
In India in 2013, the Supreme Court revoked the clearance, initially granted to Vedanta Alumina Limited by the Indian Government in 2004, for a mining project in the Niyamgiri hills in the eastern state of Orissa. The mining project would have destroyed the hills on which the local Dongria Kondh tribe relied for their livelihood. After local civil society organizations filed several court petitions against the project, the court acknowledged the harmful environmental impact of the project on the tribe and on wildlife, ruling that the mining project would not proceed.