A first-of-its-kind liability roadmap outlining how local to global decision-makers can hold polluting industries liable for the climate damage they knowingly cause has been launched.

A global coalition – including organisations such as Corporate Accountability, Friends of the Earth International and Global Forest Coalition – has released the tool just before New York Climate Week and is the next stage in the global campaign to Make Big Polluters Pay.

Liability refers to using tools – legal, legislative, policy, cultural – to hold corporations and industries responsible for their roles in driving the climate crisis and undermining action to address it.

The roadmap also outlines how climate finance can be unlocked to address the climate crisis and implement solutions to tackle the issue.

Sara Shaw, Climate Justice & Energy Programme Co-ordinator at Friends of the Earth International said: “Big Polluters have wrecked our climate, ecosystems, lives and livelihoods for too long. They manage to abdicate any responsibility and only benefit from the damage they cause, which falls disproportionately on Global South communities, Indigenous Peoples, people of colour, women, workers, farmers, peasants and low income communities.

“The Liability Roadmap is a tool we can use to call to account those who have knowingly caused the climate crisis, and make them pay. Not only that, it lays the foundations for systemic change – reducing corporate power and ensuring resources for the much-needed just transformation.”