In an April 9 landmark decision, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France ruled Switzerland’s government’s insufficient action to address the climate crisis had violated their citizens’ human rights. Many legal observers say the verdict could influence other courts to look favorably on similar future lawsuits.
The plaintiffs in a Switzerland group, Senior Women for Climate Protection — 2,000 women ages 64 and up — argued that inaction by the Swiss government put their health at risk during increasingly more frequent heat waves that climate science attributes to global warming. Europe’s highest human rights court agreed, declaring that Switzerland had failed to meet its target to reduce carbon emissions and must act to address that failure.
This is the first case where an international court has determined that governments are legally obligated to meet their carbon emission reduction goals under human rights law. The European Court didn’t provide specific instructions on the policies to be implemented but left it to the Swiss government to comply following its democratic process. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Kiley Price, a reporter with the online publication Inside Climate News, who provides an overview of the significance of this case, covered in her recent article, “A Group of Women Took Switzerland to Court Over Climate Inaction—and Won.”
KILEY PRICE: In 2020, a group of women aged 64 and up filed a lawsuit before Europe’s top human rights court against Switzerland for violating their rights by not protecting them from the health impacts of climate change.
So each of these women were part of a group which in English is called Senior Women for Climate Protection. And more specifically, they alleged that Swiss authorities were not taking sufficient action despite their duties under the European Convention on Human Rights, which the court said legally guarantees people the “effective protection by the state authorities from the serious adverse effects of climate change.”
So, on April 9th of this year – that’s four years later from when the case was originally filed in front of this top human rights court – the court decided in the women’s favor, which marked the first time an international court has ruled on government’s legal obligations regarding climate change.
So it’s a pretty landmark case. It’s gotten a lot of buzz and I think people are waiting to see how it plays out in the rest of the world. But I think what was really striking about it is that there were basically 17 judges from different countries, perspectives and legal backgrounds, but it was a near-unanimous decision in this scenario.
SCOTT HARRIS: What action does this verdict authorize in terms of mitigating climate change or enforcing the rules or pledges nations make — Switzerland, is of course, most relevant to this case. What does this verdict mean for people in Europe or Switzerland here?
KILEY PRICE: The court didn’t go as far as to say exactly what Switzerland had to do to mitigate the situation. But kind of jumping back to what they found, like Switzerland not fulfilling its climate commitments. More specifically, the country didn’t fulfill its pledge to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent by 2020 compared with 1990 levels.
Instead, they found that Switzerland reduced emissions by around just 11 percent between 2013 and 2020. So they didn’t fulfill this pledge that they publicly made. The court also found that they hadn’t set what’s called a national carbon budget, which basically puts a cap on how much carbon dioxide can be emitted by industry, homes, and the economy throughout the country.
So that’s kind of the background of how they came to the conclusion they did but without going as far as to say specific actions they had to take. The court instead let Switzerland to determine its own measures to remedy this in their country. But, that’s going to be under the supervision of a committee of government representatives from member states.
So basically, if Switzerland doesn’t update its policies, experts are saying that future litigation could follow up at a national level. And potentially even financial penalties could follow if they don’t do this.
SCOTT HARRIS: So really, it lays a legal foundation for future litigation is what you’re saying, right?
KILEY PRICE: Yeah. Pretty much. And so, kind of jumping ahead. I know that, this case was technically against Switzerland, but given that it was at Europe’s top human rights court, it actually binds other European countries as well. It had pretty far-reaching impacts, most directly for Europe, meaning that if nations don’t align their climate plans with the science-based targets included in the Paris Agreement which was decided in 2015, they could face similar litigation that Switzerland has faced in national courts and international courts.
Experts are saying there’s going to be probably influence in other courts far-reaching across the world. You might remember back in 2022 in the summer, there were a series of heat waves in Europe that just absolutely impacted almost every country across Europe. And it killed more than 61,000 people in Europe. And the majority of them were women over 80 years old.
So in this case, the Swiss women argued that their age and gender made them particularly vulnerable to such climate change impacts. And there’s data to back this up in Switzerland specifically, more than 60 percent of the 600ish heat-related deaths in 2022 were attributed to global warming. And that’s interesting here, because attribution science is essentially a form of science that tries to link things or not link things.
That’s where it’s difficult with climate change court cases to be able to definitively make a link to climate change and some sort of extreme weather events, like a heat wave. But in this case, the court did rule that Switzerland was putting these women who are a bit older at risk. And heat waves was just one example of that.
Listen to Scott Harris’ in-depth interview with Kiley Price (25:11). More articles and opinion pieces are found in the Related Links section of this page.
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