Recently, an article published by the Commonwealth Lawyers Association caught my attention. Written by Singaporean lawyer and mediator Anil Changaroth and his colleague Lenny Rahman from Brunei, it approached climate disputes through the lens of restorative justice.
Reading it, I found myself thinking: this is not only about climate. This is about redefining what resolution itself means.
Where Courts Fall Short
The point Changaroth and Rahman make is a powerful one: in climate disputes, courts can clarify obligations, but they cannot resolve systemic and intergenerational harm.
The Urgenda and Shell cases demonstrated this. Courts issued rulings. But what happened to the relationships? To long-term compliance mechanisms? Where did the real stakeholders — communities, future generations — stand in those processes?
The questions remained far larger than the decisions.
Restorative Justice: A New Framework
What the authors propose is applying restorative justice principles to climate conflicts. The framework rests on three core questions:
What harm was caused? Who was affected? How can it be repaired?
These questions are familiar to me. They sit at the heart of any good mediation or facilitation process. The difference is this: in climate disputes, these questions need to be asked not around a single table, but across continents and across generations.
That scale demands that the method scales with it.
The New Conflicts ESG Is Creating
The section of the article that stayed with me most was the one on ESG.
As ESG standards grow stronger, a new category of dispute is emerging: unmet emissions targets, inadequate disclosures, greenwashing claims, disagreements over how just transition processes should be managed.
These are not technical violations. They are crises of legitimacy and trust.
And crises of trust cannot be resolved by court rulings. They require dialogue. Structured, impartial, relationship-centred dialogue.
Where Does Turkey Stand?
Reading Changaroth and Rahman, I kept thinking about Turkey.
Climate-related disputes are not yet at the centre of our agenda. But mandatory corporate sustainability reporting is arriving. Investors are beginning to ask ESG questions. Environmental impact debates around infrastructure projects are intensifying.
These disputes are coming. The question is: are we ready?
As Changaroth points out, this field belongs not only to lawyers, but to mediators, facilitators, and multidisciplinary teams. Because climate conflicts do not require a technical verdict. They require social consensus.
The Nature of Resolution Is Changing
At Davos 2026, we heard the same message: power is no longer measured only by authority, but by the ability to create shared meaning.
Climate disputes are the sharpest example of this shift. Because being right is not enough here. A path forward has to be found together.
Restorative justice is not merely a method. It is a different way of approaching resolution entirely.
Changaroth and Rahman have brought this approach to an international platform. It is time for Turkey to join the conversation.
Reference: Anil Changaroth & Lenny Rahman, "Restorative Justice For Climate Conflicts: Rethinking the Future of Appropriate Dispute Resolution", Commonwealth Lawyers Association, April 2026.