Who are Switzerland’s victorious climate ‘Elders’?

The Swiss women’s association Elders for Climate Protection secured a historic win on Tuesday when Europe’s top rights court faulted Switzerland for not doing enough to tackle global warming.

Here are some facts about the group of Swiss seniors who helped secure the European Court of Human Rights’ first-ever condemnation of a country for failing to take action against climate change.

In August 2016, a small group of women above retirement age who had bonded over concerns about climate change created the association to demand stronger action towards reaching the goals set by the 2015 Paris Agreement.

That agreement set targets for governments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, with the aim of preferably limiting warming to below global temperature rises to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.

“If everyone acted as Switzerland is doing today, global warming of up to three degrees Celsius could occur by 2100,” the Elders for Climate Protection say on their website.

“Keeping below 1.5 degrees is decisive to avert more serious threats to human rights.” Today, the association says it counts more than 2,500 members — all women over the age of 64 who live in Switzerland. Their average age is 73, it said. “Elderly women are extremely vulnerable to the effects of heat,” the association said, explaining its membership criteria.

It does not meanwhile place the same restrictions on its some 1,200 supporters.

The organisation has been arguing for climate protection to be recognised as a human right, pointing out that the increasingly frequent and intense heatwaves it is causing “pose a real and serious risk to our lives and physical and mental health”.

But the lawsuits it brought in Switzerland were all thrown out.

After failing to get a hearing before Switzerland’s Supreme Court, the Elders for Climate Protection filed an appeal in 2020 with the European Court of Human Rights.

That court finally issued its verdict on Tuesday, finding that the Swiss state had violated Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees the “right to respect for private and family life”.

EUROPE’S TOP RIGHTS COURT SAID SWITZERLAND WAS NOT DOING ENOUGH TO TACKLE CLIMATE CHANGE, IN THE FIRST SUCH RULING ON THE RESPONSIBILITY OF STATES IN CURBING GLOBAL WARMING

— AFP Members of Swizz association Senior Women for Climate Protection react after the announcement of decisions after a hearing of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) to decide in three separate cases if states are doing enough in the face of global warming in rulings that could force them to do more, in Strasbourg, eastern France, on Tuesday.