Rosmarie Wydler-Wälti is sitting on her sofa in Basel, a fragile-looking woman with chin-length gray hair. She really doesn’t look like anyone should be afraid of her. But as we all know, first impressions can be deceptive. Rosmarie Wydler-Wälti is 72 years old, former kindergarten teacher and parent advisor, mother of four and grandmother of eight grandchildren. She’s lost a lot of weight over the past year, she says: probably the oat milk in muesli, which she now uses instead of cow’s milk; she now almost completely avoids meat. Flying is out of the question anyway, her family has never owned a car.
Wydler-Wälti is a climate activist, and that poses certain challenges, especially in old age. In addition to her weight loss, Wydler-Wälti also reports back and shoulder pain. Many of her fellow campaigners get it regularly when they hold up the banners at demos for too long. “And we are smaller than most men, nobody sees us with our posters.”
“We sue for our health, but if we win, everyone wins.”
It is precisely these characteristics, the fact that she is a woman and has reached a certain age, that have made Rosmarie Wydler-Wälti one of the most promising fighters against the climate crisis at the moment – and one of the women who are the state institutions of her country could teach fear. Wydler-Wälti is co-president of the Swiss association “Klimaseniorinnen”. More than 2,000 women, averaging 73 years old, have joined forces under the name to take the Swiss government to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). Their state, according to the main accusation, does not protect them enough from the effects of the climate crisis. “Although we older women are particularly affected by it!” says Wydler-Wälti.
In fact, heat waves are particularly dangerous for older people, as studies by the World Health Organization (WHO) and publications by the Swiss Federal Offices for Health and the Environment show. The older people get, the more difficult it is for them to regulate their body temperature, they sweat less and hardly ever feel thirsty. The result can be dehydration, heat cramps or life-threatening heat stroke. And apparently the danger for women is even higher: Loud a WHO study more women than men died in the hot summer of 2003 in Europe.
That is the basis of their lawsuit. The climate seniors claim that their right to life and health, enshrined in both the Swiss constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights, is being violated by their country’s inadequate climate targets. “We’re suing for our health,” says Wydler-Wälti, “but if we win, everyone wins.”
The idea for this climate lawsuit came from Greenpeace Switzerland. In order to be able to sue in Switzerland at all, you have to be particularly badly and acutely affected by a grievance. “We therefore filtered out the group that is most affected by the climate crisis today – and that is women over 75,” explains Cordelia Bähr, the climate senior women’s advocate.
Greenpeace then looked for senior women who would file the complaint and turned to the “grandmothers’ revolution”: a kind of network of committed older Swiss women, to which Rosmarie Wydler-Wälti belongs. “I was there right away,” says the Basel native. In 2016, almost four dozen women founded the Association of Climate Seniors, which is still supported by Greenpeace today.
“I was there right away”: the Basel climate activist Rosmarie Wydler-Wälti.
(Photo: Isabell Pfaff)
First they turned their complaint to the Swiss government, then to the Swiss Federal Administrative Court, then to the Federal Supreme Court. Everywhere they were rejected. Sometimes with the argument that women over 75 are no more affected than the general public by the climate crisis. Sometimes with the thesis that global warming has not progressed far enough at this point in time to claim that it is particularly affected.
In autumn 2020, the women then moved to Strasbourg before the ECtHR. He accepted her lawsuit in March 2021 and even gave her high priority. However: From a formal point of view, it has not yet been decided whether the Court will examine the content of the complaint at all. Because, as the judgments in Switzerland show, it is not that easy to justify individual legal standing in this case. “Appellants must show that they are directly affected by a violation of their rights,” said Helen Keller, a former judge at the Court of Justice, at a recent lecture. “The general nature of climate change represents a major procedural hurdle.”
A high but surmountable hurdle, added Keller. The court may only intervene in the case of people who are particularly badly affected by climate change. For example, because their region has been hit harder than another, or because they are suffering from the hot summers due to old age or illness. In this respect, the seniors have a good hand.
In any case, the court has already signaled sensitivity to climate lawsuits. Last year he prioritized a lawsuit by young people from Portugal, and court president Róbert Spanó specifically pointed out the “new legal issues” of such cases. And at the end of April the case of the climate seniors even happened transferred to the Grand Chamber been, so to the top. The seniors assume that the ECtHR will hold a public hearing in the coming months.
In addition, climate lawsuits may be new in Strasbourg, but environmental protection is not. In 2014, for example, the Court ruled on a complaint alleging excessive exposure to asbestos at a plant in Malta. The state knew early on, but did not inform workers about the risks. The human rights convention provides for “a positive obligation on states to take reasonable steps to protect the lives of those within their jurisdiction”. The court ruled that this also applies to the risks of industrial activities. These are legal building blocks that would also fit into a climate protection judgment.
If the climate lawsuits are successful, this would have consequences far beyond the EU. Because the court is an institution of the Council of Europe with 46 member states, including important non-EU states such as Turkey, Great Britain and Switzerland, which are not being pushed by the ambitious Fit-for-55 program of the EU. “We would then have a clearer anchoring of the duty to protect against the consequences of climate change in Europe,” says lawyer Roda Verheyen, who herself has drawn up many climate protection lawsuits. “The debate would be opened as to which country needs to reduce carbon emissions by how much.” In addition, the requirements from Strasbourg could also seep into national law in Germany, for example in the judicial review of climate-related projects.
In Switzerland, a referendum could overturn any law, no matter how well-intentioned
In Switzerland itself, things are more complicated because of the possibilities for direct democracy. As a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights, the government must implement the judgments of the ECtHR. But the Swiss can organize a referendum against any law. All you have to do is get 50,000 signatures. In June 2021, the new CO₂ law that the government and parliament had introduced to achieve the Paris climate goals was defeated in this way. The government is now working on a new approach, but given the defeat in the referendum, this should not be overly ambitious.
Rosemarie Wydler-Wälti, the climate senior, and her lawyer Cordelia Bähr also have no solution to this Switzerland-specific dilemma. Bähr nevertheless assumes that Switzerland will duly implement the court’s decision. And Wydler-Wälti hopes that if her country wins in court, it will come under so much international pressure that the population will ultimately go along with it.