Brazil's Federal Prosecutor's Office and Instituto Preservar filed a public civil action against Shell Brasil over the 2024 Rio Grande do Sul floods. The disaster killed more than 180 people and displaced about 600,000. The suit seeks around R$541 million, roughly US$108 million, for material damages and collective moral damages. It relies on Brazil's strict environmental liability law and on Carbon Majors data that attributes 2.02 percent of cumulative fossil fuel and cement CO2 emissions since 1854 to the Shell group. The case is pending before a specialized federal court unit in Porto Alegre. Unlike US climate suits that rest on nuisance or consumer deception, this petition uses a national statute and the integral risk theory, which blocks force majeure as a defense. The plaintiffs also cite Shell's own 1986 report and 1991 film to show the company knew about flood risks. The central question is whether Brazilian courts will accept a formula that converts rainfall intensity increase and emissions share into a damage split, or require a full end-to-end attribution study. The outcome will test whether cumulative emissions data can be used to apportion disaster costs to a carbon major.
