Our Children’s Trust
While the climate crisis affects us all to varying degrees, children’s lives are most acutely in danger. The scientific evidence is clear and compelling as to the disproportionate and catastrophic mental, physical, and cultural health impacts for children. And yet, young people most impacted by this crisis lack the voting or economic power to create change—making the climate crisis the worldwide, children’s rights issue of our lifetimes. Our Children’s Trust pioneered youth-led climate litigation in 2010 when they launched a wave of youth-powered legal actions to secure children’s right to a livable climate. This wave, together with initial landmark rulings by courts, inspired the “rights turn” in strategic climate limitation. Today there are hundreds of climate rights cases; youth have brought 40 cases in 20 countries. Our Children’s Trust represents 173 children with seven cases in the United States and four globally.
THE CASE
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Sagoonik v. State of Alaska II
Eight young Alaskans who are experiencing devasting harms from the climate crisis filed a lawsuit against their state to obtain judicial recognition and protection of their fundamental climate rights and to stop the Alaska LNG Project. Plaintiffs challenge the law requiring the Alaska Gasline Development Corporation, a state-created entity, to advance and develop the Alaska LNG Project, which would more than triple Alaska’s greenhouse gas emissions for decades. They claim the state’s law, which mandates state support of the project, violates their rights under the due process and public trust doctrine protections provided in Alaska’s Constitution. They seek declaratory relief that the law is unconstitutional and an injunction prohibiting the state from moving forward with the project.
The youth plaintiffs are on the frontlines of the climate crisis. Many are from remote Alaska Native communities that have relied on the fish and wildlife of local lands and waters to sustain their lives, health, and cultures since time immemorial. Many of these communities’ livelihoods and continuing existences are in danger of being wiped off the map by the climate crisis. A ruling for the youth would establish that their access to subsistence resources and their cultural traditions and identities are protected under Alaska’s Constitution.
