Court ruling ‘turning point’ on climate crisis

Verdict could ripple across Europe

Europe’s highest human rights court ruled yesterday that countries must better protect their people from the consequences of climate change, siding with a group of older Swiss women against their Government in a landmark ruling that could have implications across the continent.

The European Court of Human Rights rejected two other, similar cases on procedural grounds — a highprofile one brought by Portuguese young people and another by a French mayor that sought to force governments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

But the Swiss case, nonetheless, sets a legal precedent in the Council of Europe’s 46 member states against which future lawsuits will be judged.

“This is a turning point,” said Corina Heri, an expert in climate change litigation at the University of Zurich.

Although activists have had success with lawsuits in domestic proceedings, this was the first time an international court ruled on climate change — and the first decision confirming that countries have an obligation to protect people from its effects, according to Heri.

She said it would open the door to more legal challenges in the countries that are members of the Council of Europe, which includes the 27 European Union nations as well as many others from Britain to Turkey.

The Swiss ruling softened the blow for those who lost yesterday.

“The most important thing is that the court has said in the Swiss women’s case that governments must cut their emissions more to protect human rights,” said 19-yearold Sofia Oliveira, one of the Portuguese plaintiffs. “Their win is a win for us, too, and a win for everyone!”

The court — which is unrelated to the EU — ruled that Switzerland “had failed to comply with its duties” to combat climate change and meet emissions targets.

That, the court said, was a violation of the women’s rights, noting that the European Convention on Human Rights guarantees people “effective protection by the state authorities from the serious adverse effects of climate change on their lives, health, wellbeing and quality of life”. A group called Senior Women for Climate Protection, whose average age is 74, had argued that they were particularly affected because older women are most vulnerable to the extreme heat that is becoming more frequent.

“The court recognised our fundamental right to a healthy climate and to have our country do what it failed to do until now: that is to say taking ambitious measures to protect our health and protect the future of all,” Anne Mahrer, a member of the group, said.

Switzerland said it would study the decision to see what steps would be needed. “We have to, in good faith, implement and execute the judgment,” Alain Chablais, who represented the country at last year’s hearings, told AP.

Judge Siofra O’Leary, the court’s president, stressed that it would be up to governments to decide how to approach climate change obligations — and experts noted that was a limit of the ruling.

“The European Court of Human Rights stopped short of ordering the Swiss Government to take any specific action, underscoring that relief from the Swiss Government ‘necessarily depends on democratic decision-making’ to enact the laws necessary to impose such a remedy,” said Richard Lazarus, a professor at Harvard Law School who specialises in environmental and natural resources law.

Activists have argued that many governments have not grasped the gravity of climate change — and are increasingly looking to the courts to force them to do more to ensure global warming is held to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, in line with the goals of the Paris climate agreement.

A United States judge in Montana ruled last year that state agencies were violating the constitutional right to a clean environment by allowing fossil fuel development — a first-of-itskind trial in the US..

Climate activist Greta Thunberg was in the courtroom as the decision was announced.

“These rulings are a call to action. They underscore the importance of taking our national governments to court,” she said.

For the 10th consecutive month, Earth in March set a new monthly record for global heat — with both air temperatures and the world’s oceans hitting an all-time high for the month, the European Union climate agency Copernicus said.

March 2024 averaged 14.14C, exceeding the previous record from 2016 by a tenth of a degree, according to Copernicus data. And it was 1.68C warmer than in the late 1800s, the base

used before the burning of fossil fuels began growing rapidly.

Since last June, the globe has broken heat records each month, with marine heatwaves across large areas of the globe’s oceans contributing.

Scientists say the record-breaking heat during this time wasn’t entirely surprising due to a strong El Nino condition, which warms the central Pacific and changes global patterns.

“But its combination with the non

natural marine heat waves made these records so breathtaking,” said Woodwell Climate Research Centre scientist Jennifer Francis. With El Nino waning, the margins by which global averages are surpassed each month should go down, Francis said.

Climate scientists attribute most of the record heat to human-caused climate change from carbon dioxide and methane emissions produced by the burning of coal, oil and natural gas.

“The trajectory will not change until concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere stop rising,” Francis said, “which means we must stop burning fossil fuels, stop deforestation, and grow our food more sustainably as quickly as possible.”

Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, the world set a goal to keep warming at or below 1.5C since pre-industrial times. Copernicus’ temperature data is monthly and uses a slightly different measurement system than the Paris threshold, which is averaged over two or three decades.

Samantha Burgess, deputy director of Copernicus, said March’s record wasn’t as exceptional as some other months in the past year that broke records by wider margins.

“We’ve had record-breaking months that have been even more unusual,” Burgess said, pointing to February 2024 and September 2023.

But the “trajectory is not in the right direction,” she added.

The globe has now experienced 12 months with average monthly temperatures 1.58C above the Paris threshold, according to Copernicus data.

In March, global sea surface temperature averaged 21.07C, the highest monthly value on record and slightly higher than what was recorded in February.