Shell sued over climate-linked disasters in Brazil and the Philippines

A Brazilian lawsuit, filed jointly by federal prosecutors and the NGO Instituto Preservar, targets Shell’s South American subsidiary for the catastrophic 2024 floods in southern Brazil, seeking compensation of about $108 million. The claim is based on attribution science that attributes a 12 percent intensification of rainfall to climate change, with Shell held responsible for two percent of global emissions, a share three times larger than Petrobras.

Meanwhile, in the Philippines, roughly 100 survivors of Typhoon Rai, which struck in December 2021, have brought a case against Shell in the United Kingdom, arguing that the company’s historic carbon output and alleged early knowledge of climate impacts amount to negligence. Lawyers for the Philippine plaintiffs cite internal Shell documents from the 1980s acknowledging fossil-fuel contributions to warming. Shell has not responded to the Brazilian filing and has dismissed claims of unique early climate knowledge in a recent statement. These actions represent early test cases using attribution science to hold major polluters financially liable for specific climate-related damages.