The European Court of Human Rights on Tuesday said governments have a duty to work to stop climate change and mitigate its impact on residents, ruling for a group of older women who claimed they’re at a higher risk of death from heat waves because the Swiss government has not done enough to protect them from the warming planet.
Protesters hold pennants during a rally before the European Court of Human Rights on April 9, 2024.
The court said it is a violation of basic human rights for a government to not meet emissions targets or otherwise work to fight climate change, a ruling that could open the door for more legal challenges in the 46 member countries in the Council of Europe human rights group.
Court President Siofra O’Leary blasted Switzerland’s government for failing to cut its greenhouse gas emissions and for not implementing a solid domestic regulatory framework that would take concrete steps toward tackling climate change.
Switzerland will have to pay €80,000 (roughly $87,000) in the judgment to cover the legal costs of the group who brought the suit after the court rejected its argument that human rights law does not apply to climate change, according to the New York Times.
The case was one of three similar climate lawsuits to go before the court, which ruled the other two inadmissible largely on jurisdictional grounds—one was bought by a group of six youth activists in Portugal over greenhouse gas emissions and the other by the former mayor of a French coastal town more prone to flooding as climate change continues to worsen.
O’Leary ultimately decided it will be up to individual governments to decide how they meet their climate change obligations, the Associated Press reported.
“It is clear that future generations are likely to bear an increasingly severe burden of the consequences of present failures and omissions to combat climate change,” O’Leary said.
Thousands of women over the age of 64 came together to sue the Swiss government as a group called KlimaSeniorinnen, or Senior Women for Climate Protection. They claimed the government failed to protect their right to life, because people in their age and gender group are more likely to die from heat-related illnesses. Like across much of the world (2023 was the warmest year since global record keeping began in 1850), heat waves have swept Switzerland in recent summers. Switzerland broke temperature records on the ground last summer and at the zero-degree line—the altitude at which the temperature falls below freezing. That line is getting higher and higher (it moved from 5,184 meters in July of 2022 to 5,298 meters last August), meaning it is staying warm the further into the atmosphere scientists measure, which “has a considerable impact on the habitats of humans, animals and plants alike,” MeteoSwiss reported last year. By not working to stop the warming of the planet, the government has opened residents up to an increased risk of dying, KlimaSeniorinnen claimed in its lawsuit.
More lawsuits. By ruling climate change and human rights are linked, the court has opened the door to more claims of violations in dozens of other countries. Ruth Delbaere of the nonprofit Avaaz campaign told Reuters the case serves as “a blueprint for how to successfully sue your own government over climate failures.”
The case in Switzerland draws parallels to a similar action in Montana last year, which also saw the court rule in favor of climate activists. More than a dozen young people sued the state in 2020, claiming legislators favored the fossil fuel industry over residents and wildlife, violating their state constitutional right to a “clean and healthful environment.” A judge agreed and struck down a law that barred state agencies from considering environmental impacts when permitting energy projects. Like the European decision, the Montana court stopped short of ordering the state to develop a remedial plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, instead leaving future climate actions up to the local government. Montana in February filed an appeal of the ruling.