Climate Justice and Corporate Accountability: An analysis of Emerging Role of Judiciary in Advancing Corporate Climate Accountability in Pakistan

Abstract

Pakistan's superior courts have built one of the Global South's most cited bodies of climate jurisprudence, from the precautionary-principle reasoning of Shehla Zia v WAPDA through the celebrated Leghari litigation to the Supreme Court's 2021 judgment in DG Khan Cement Company Ltd v Government of Punjab. However, these cases has been directed almost entirely against the State policies and inaction rather than corporate conduct. This paper discusses as how the same constitutional and public-trust reasoning that Pakistani courts have used to hold the State accountable for climate inaction could be extended to private corporate actors whose industrial activity is a principal source of Pakistan's greenhouse gas emissions and environmental harm. Grounded in legal stabilization theory and the Legal Opportunity Structure framework, the article maps the existing statutory framework for corporate environmental liability in Pakistan. It explores the comparative developments in corporate climate litigation at international level, and identifies the doctrinal, evidentiary and institutional barriers that presently constrain judicial extension of climate accountability to corporations. It concludes that Pakistani courts possess the constitutional tools to develop a corporate climate duty of care, but that judicial innovation alone cannot substitute for the legislative and regulatory reform needed to make such a duty enforceable in a developing-country with limited resources.