43 parents from the Drôme have filed a class action before the administrative court of Lyon to denounce the environmental inaction of the regional prefect and force him to act to protect their children from the effects of global warming. – PATRICK HERTZOG / AFP
- 43 parents from the Drôme have filed a collective action before the administrative court of Lyon to denounce the environmental inaction of the regional prefect.
- They hope in this way to force him to act in order to protect their children from the effects of global warming.
- The complaint was filed at the end of December, we learn this Sunday.
They are impatient not to have answers. Forty-three families from the Drôme seized the administrative court of Lyon, filing a complaint at the end of December against the regional prefect to denounce his “environmental inaction”, we learned this Sunday from the association
Parents for the planet at the origin of this action. They also launched
a petition having collected to that day: 79,000 signatures. With the same objective: to force the prefect to act to protect their children from the harmful effects of climate change.
A graceful appeal was introduced in August without being followed up. The parents’ letter, addressed to the prefect, went unanswered. Considering that this was an “implicit” refusal to act, they decided to collectively take legal action. And for this they relied on the international declaration of the rights of the child, in which it is written that the signatory states “undertake to ensure to the child the protection and the care necessary for his well-being, that all child has the right to life, to be in good health and has the right to well-being ”.
Food and health security
“For several years, we have observed the absence of means implemented by the State in the protection of the environment, argue the parents in a press release. Its inaction in the Drôme department poses serious risks to the food and health security of these children ”. And to quote the water deficit of the waters of the Drôme (up to 92% in summer 2019), the periods of drought and heat waves “increasingly long” and in fact, the decline in agricultural resources “for ten years. years ”.
“ Added to this is an increase in the artificialization of soils, the air is increasingly polluted and biodiversity is threatened, ”continues the collective defended by the Lyon lawyer Hélène Leleu.
The Administrative Court of Lyon asked the Prefect to respond to the observations made by the applicants before February 5, 2020. “To date, he has not yet responded to our writings,” the applicants still deplore by way of conclusion.