The European Court of Human Rights said on Tuesday that the Swiss government had violated people's human rights by not doing enough to stop climate change, but experts said the landmark judgment He pointed out that this could give momentum to activists who are trying to hold the government accountable.
In the case, brought by a group called KlimaSeniorinnen (Senior Women for Climate Protection), the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, ruled that Switzerland was failing to meet its carbon emissions reduction targets and that He said there was a need to act. There are drawbacks.
Women aged 64 and older said their health was at risk from heatwaves caused by global warming. They argued that the Swiss government had violated its rights by failing to take sufficient steps to mitigate global warming.
The ruling is the latest in a wide range of climate-related lawsuits aimed at forcing governments to take action to combat global warming, and domestic courts around the world are also hearing similar cases. But experts said this was the first time an international tribunal had ruled that a government had a legal obligation to meet climate change targets under human rights law.
“This is the first time that an international court has clearly recognized that the climate crisis is a human rights crisis,” said Joye Chowdhury, a senior lawyer at the International Environmental Law Center, an international organization that supported Klimaseniolinen's lawsuit. ” he said.
The decision is legally binding, but experts say states are ultimately responsible for complying.
Annalisa Savaresi, a professor of environmental law at the University of Eastern Finland, said she hoped the country would comply with the court's ruling. “Switzerland is a country of laws, not a rogue state, just because it is Switzerland,” she says. “They are keen to be seen as doing the right thing.”
Experts say the ruling could encourage more people to file lawsuits at a time when many other countries are failing to meet their climate goals.
“I expect we'll see a surge in litigation in other European countries, because most countries are doing the same thing,” said Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University in New York. “They failed to meet their climate targets and failed to set adequate climate targets.”
Gerrard said the European ruling was unlikely to influence the U.S. court's decision. In the United States, states, cities, and counties are suing fossil fuel companies over climate damage, and young people are suing over climate change damage. The failure of the state and federal governments to protect the public from the effects of global warming.
But Mr Gerrard said: “The idea that climate change undermines fundamental rights resonated throughout the case.”
Tuesday's court ruling covers three cases in which citizens claimed their governments were in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights by not taking sufficient steps to mitigate climate change. Two of the lawsuits brought by a former mayor of a French coastal city and a group of Portuguese youth were dismissed as inadmissible.
A heatwave hit Switzerland in recent summers, and the litigants, who have been working on the case for nearly a decade with Greenpeace and a team of lawyers, pointed to research showing older women are particularly susceptible to heatstroke.
Four of the women had heart or respiratory diseases and were at risk of death on extremely hot days, he said. Many other participants across Switzerland said they were suffering from fatigue, lightheadedness and other symptoms due to the extreme heat.
Under its commitment to combating climate change, Switzerland has pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by 2020 compared to 1990 levels. However, the judgment said that between 2013 and 2020 Switzerland was only able to reduce its emissions levels by about 11%. He also said the country had failed to utilize tools such as carbon budgets that could quantify efforts to limit emissions.
The ruling said the Swiss government failed to protect the rights of its citizens by failing to act “in an appropriate time, in an appropriate and consistent manner.”
The court ordered Switzerland to take steps to remedy these deficiencies and to pay Klimaseniolinnen 80,000 euros (approximately $87,000) to cover costs and expenses.
The Swiss government had argued that human rights law did not apply to climate change and that tackling climate change should be a political process. But the Swiss Federal Attorney's Office, which represents Switzerland at the European Court of Justice, said in a statement on Tuesday that Swiss authorities would analyze the ruling and consider what steps the country should take.
The court said the Swiss government was in the best position to decide how to proceed, given the complexity of the issues involved. A committee of government representatives from the court's member states will oversee whether Switzerland takes steps to address the ruling.
Rosmary Widler Verti, co-chairman of Klimaseniolinnen, called the decision “a victory for all generations” in a statement on Tuesday.
The second case considered by the court focused on complaints relating to Grand Sinte, a French town on the English Channel coast that faces increased flood risks due to climate change. Damien Carême, the town's mayor from 2001 to 2019, argued in the lawsuit that France put Grande Sinte at risk by taking insufficient steps to prevent global warming.
But the court ruled that Mr Carême, now a member of the European Parliament, no longer lived in France and therefore had no legal connection to the town, so his case could not be accepted.
The court also ruled against a lawsuit brought by six young Portuguese men against 33 countries, including Portugal, that are signatories to the Paris Climate Agreement, for failing to honor their commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The applicants argued that the current and future impacts of climate change, such as heat waves, bushfires and smoke from fires, are impacting their lives, wellbeing and mental health.
The court ruled that the applicants had not exhausted all legal options in Portugal and that filing charges against 32 other countries would involve an “unlimited extension” of the state's jurisdiction. I put it down.
david gelles I contributed a report from New York.
