Complicit in global warming?: Brazil's public prosecutor's office sues Shell over flood disaster

In the state of Rio Grande do Sul, half a million people will have to flee devastating floods in 2024, and almost 200 will die. Brazil's public prosecutor sees the British oil company Shell as complicit and is now demanding 108 million euros. Lawsuits against energy giants are also increasing elsewhere.

In connection with deadly floods in 2024, Brazil's public prosecutor's office is demanding almost 100 million euros in damages from a subsidiary of the oil giant Shell. The claim against Shell Brasil is based on the parent company's shared responsibility for global warming, the public prosecutor's office explained in a court document. Accordingly, two percent of historical greenhouse gas emissions worldwide are at Shell's expense.

The demands relate to flooding in the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul in April and May 2024, which killed almost 200 people and forced half a million people to flee their homes. In addition, the flood caused material damage on an unprecedented scale.

"It is the first time that a national prosecutor's office has brought a claim against a major oil company for a climate disaster," said Maria Antonia Tigre of the Sabin Center for Legal Issues on Climate Change at the University of Colombia. The non-governmental organization Instituto Preservar is also taking part in the lawsuit in Brazil.

According to the lawsuit, Shell should be prosecuted for “its historic and ongoing contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions associated with the extraction, production and marketing of fossil fuels.” The public prosecutor's office is demanding 270 million reals from the global British company for "moral" and environmental damage and the same amount for material damage. Together, that amounts to the equivalent of 108 million dollars or 96 million euros.

More and more climate lawsuits worldwide

In the UK, victims of a typhoon in the Philippines have filed a climate lawsuit against Shell. In view of the increasing damage caused by advancing global warming, the number of climate lawsuits is increasing internationally.

In Germany, farmers from Pakistan want to assert a claim for compensation before the Heidelberg Regional Court with a climate lawsuit filed in December 2025 against the energy company RWE and the company Heidelberg Materials. This concerns damage caused by catastrophic floods in 2022.

A climate lawsuit brought by the Peruvian small farmer Saúl Luciano Lliuya against the energy company RWE was groundbreaking. In May 2025, the Higher Regional Court in Hamm rejected Lliuya's specific lawsuit, but in the proceedings it found that large energy companies were fundamentally responsible for climate damage in Peru.