Climate Action Is a Legal Obligation, European Court Rules

CLIMATEWIRE | A landmark ruling Tuesday by a European human rights court will likely pave the way for future lawsuits that could force countries to act more quickly to cut their planet-warming pollution.

The European Court of Human Rights found that the Switzerland government was violating the rights of a group of senior women by failing to seriously address the climate crisis. It’s the first time the court has determined that climate change is a human rights issue, laying out a road map for how future climate cases can be brought before the influential court, legal scholars say.

The ruling also sets a precedent that allows citizens of European countries to hold their governments accountable for not taking sufficient action to tackle rising temperatures. And it could influence other prominent tribunals, including the International Court of Justice, as they consider countries’ legal obligations in the context of climate change.

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“It is a signal from an international court that has a high level of legitimacy that climate is not something that’s just a matter of policy and politics but has been seen by this court as a legal obligation that states have towards their citizens,” said Rebecca Hamilton, a professor of law at American University.

The decision does not directly impact the United States, which is not a party to the European Convention on Human Rights. But legal experts say it could inspire similar legal strategies outside Europe and put added pressure on the U.S. to adopt stronger measures to combat climate change.

Tuesday’s ruling involved three separate but similar cases. All allege that a lack of government action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions violates citizens’ basic rights under Europe’s human rights convention.

The court, based in Strasbourg, France, ruled that two of the cases did not meet its admissibility criteria and dismissed them.

But in the Switzerland case, the court ruled that Article 8 of the convention includes the right for individuals to be protected by their government from “serious adverse effects of climate change on their life, health, well-being and quality of life.”

The court found that the Swiss government was violating that right by not seriously addressing the climate crisis, pointing to the country’s failure to adequately quantify its emissions or meet emission reduction targets.

The court calls on Switzerland to align its climate policies with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5 degree Celsius stretch target — to ensure the government is not violating citizens’ human rights.

Countries need to put in place the necessary regulations and measures to prevent a rise in global temperatures “beyond levels capable of producing serious and irreversible adverse effects on human rights,” according to a press release summing up the court’s ruling.

“Effective respect for those rights requires States to undertake measures to reduce their [greenhouse gas] emission levels, with a view to reaching net neutrality, in principle within the next three decades,” the release concludes.

That’s significant, legal experts say, because the court took a nonbinding, aspirational target and turned it into something that states must achieve to honor their human rights obligations.

“This recognition underlines the urgency of addressing climate change and sets a scientific benchmark for evaluating the adequacy of national climate policies,” said Delta Merner, lead scientist for climate litigation at the Union of Concerned Scientists, which filed an amicus brief in support of one of the cases.

The ruling only applies directly to Switzerland. But because it relies on the broader European Convention on Human Rights, other countries that are party to the convention will be under significant legal pressure to abide by the ruling — or at least take stronger action to avoid a similar court challenge, legal scholars say.

And if all European countries are following one interpretation of how to reduce their emissions, they’re likely to exert pressure on other nations — including the U.S. — to abide by that same approach, said Paul Rink, a visiting professor at Pace University, who previously worked on one of the cases dismissed in Tuesday’s ruling.

Some U.S. state supreme courts could also look to the case as a model, said Patrick Parenteau, senior fellow for climate policy at Vermont Law and Graduate School. He pointed to the Supreme Court of Hawaii, which has ruled that the state constitution includes the right to a safe and stable climate.

“That’s a court that could very well look to the Court of Human Rights’ decisions for guidance,” Parenteau said. “They’re not going to say we’re bound by what the Strasbourg Court has done, but in terms of looking to their reasoning, their findings as persuasive, yeah, I can see that.”

The court did not prescribe what actions Switzerland needs to take, leaving that decision to the government. It will therefore be up to the group of senior women to “pursue further remedies in the Swiss courts, should the government fail to take the steps detailed in the Strasbourg court’s judgment,” Parenteau added.

Road map for future lawsuits

The two cases the court dismissed Tuesday could also guide the direction of future climate lawsuits.

One case involved a former mayor in France who no longer lives in the country. The court ruled that he doesn’t sufficiently qualify as a victim since he’s no longer directly affected by the French government’s policies.

The third and biggest case was brought by a group of youth in Portugal against 32 countries that they allege have failed to take action to protect them from the increasingly severe impacts of climate change.

The court ruled that the plaintiffs didn’t exhaust all domestic legal remedies, since they took the case directly to the high court rather than going through national courts first.

That means the case will likely have to start at the national level — a procedural step that will drag out the legal process.

But both dismissed cases paint a clear picture of what a successful climate case in the European Court of Human Rights looks like, said Hamilton from American University.

“I actually think that’s going to make it much easier and cleaner for future litigants to get these cases decided,” she said.

In the Swiss case, the court also ruled that the government had failed to uphold citizens’ right to access court because they “failed to take into consideration the compelling scientific evidence concerning climate change and had not taken the complaints seriously.”

That could also help influence future climate litigation, experts say, and highlights the important role the courts play in pushing governments to take action.

“It’s more emphasis on what’s needed, what should be happening and what isn’t happening,” said Parenteau from Vermont Law. “The courts have a very limited role here, but it’s an important role to adjudicate these claims, to lay out what the science is telling us.”

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