Portuguese young people accuse 32 countries of not sufficiently adhering to the Paris Climate Agreement. That’s why they filed a lawsuit. Today the European Court of Human Rights delivers its verdict.
Summer 2017, around 200 kilometers north of Lisbon: The forest is on fire, more than 60 people die in this fire alone, hundreds lose their homes. 16-year-old André dos Santos Oliveira from Lisbon was nine years old at the time. He still remembers that day clearly, he said at an online press conference: “I still remember how I sat in front of the television in fear when I saw all the destruction and the deaths.”
Three years after the forest fires, in autumn 2020, André and five other young people filed a lawsuit with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg. His older sister Sofia dos Santos Oliveira is also there. It is important to her to change something now.
“I am very concerned about the climate crisis and the failure of governments to protect our future. And we have to think about the future. If it happens now and is so extreme, what will it be like in 30 years?
Climate fear caused the lawsuit
A British human rights organization is supporting Sofia and the others in their lawsuit. Their goal is to ensure that states comply with their obligations under the Paris Climate Agreement – in order to limit global warming. What is unusual about the lawsuit is not only that the plaintiffs are so young, but also that so many countries are being sued at once: the EU member states, Norway, Russia, Switzerland, Turkey and the United Kingdom.
The fact that the governments’ steps so far have not been enough is already noticeable in their home country of Portugal, say siblings André and Sofia: “We had the hottest February ever, the hottest March ever and, sadly, we are getting used to these extremes,” says André . That is “totally strange”.
His sister reports about a small tornado that occurred in Lisbon last week. “I thought it would never reach Lisbon, but it did. That gave me a climate fear; the things that scare me the most are tornadoes, typhoons and heat waves.”
“A strong signal from the court”
At the hearing before the European Court of Justice last year, the states rejected the lawsuit. The representative of Portugal said the claimed damage was “too abstract.”
Gerry Liston, one of the lawyers for the young Portuguese, interprets the court’s behavior so far as a positive sign. Because: The fact that the young people’s lawsuit was not immediately dismissed was somewhat surprising. Normally the court requires that a trial be carried out in the home country first – but the court has even prioritized this lawsuit: “About 85 percent of cases are immediately dismissed as inadmissible when they are first filed with the court. And of the remaining 15 percent, only one comes a tiny fraction before the Grand Chamber. So that was a strong signal from the court right from the start.”
If the lawsuit is successful, states would be obliged to do more to protect the climate. The case could also serve as a model for further climate lawsuits against states.