How liability lawsuits could disrupt corporate power over AI and climate harm—if governments enforce systemic accountability
Original framing: “AI and the climate crisis pose existential risks. The law offers a way to reduce them | Robert Reich” — The Guardian - Environment
Indigenous legal systems, such as the *Haudenosaunee* Great Law of Peace or Māori *kaitiakitanga* (guardianship), treat harm as a violation of relational ecosystems rather than individual rights. These frameworks could redefine liability to include generational accountability—e.g., holding corporations responsible for climate impacts on future generations, as seen in the *Urenda* case in Colombia where Indigenous groups sued for ecological debt. The current liability discourse ignores how Indigenous legal pluralism offers alternatives to Western adversarial models, where restoration (e.g., land remediation) is prioritized over punitive damages.