The first climate change case at the European Court of Human Rights has been filed by young activists from Portugal, and they’ve demanded that 33 countries make stricter cuts to emissions in order to secure their future wellbeing.

Even in the middle of a global wave of climate litigation, this case is without precedent in many aspects. The most groundbreaking fact, however, is that multiple states are being sued at the same time for emissions both in and out of their borders, as well as for the climate impact their consumers and national companies have had around the world through trade, use of fossil fuels, and more.

The 33 states that charges are being presented against include the entire European Union as well as Russia, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, the UK, and Norway. The applicants want to “issue binding orders to prevent discrimination against the young and protect their rights to live without anxiety.”

Research consortium Climate Action Tracker has indicated that these 33 nations have not been taking the necessary actions to meet an internationally agreed upon goal of reducing global warming to below 2°C.

The plaintiffs — made up of four children and two young adults aged between 8 and 21 — are filing the case after Portugal broke records for the hottest July in 90 years, however the case began in 2017 when forest fires killed over 120 people in Portugal. Four of the plaintiffs are from Leiria, an area that was uniquely devastated by these fires. The two others are from Lisbon, Portugal’s capital city which went through an astonishing 44°C heatwave two years ago.

According to several scientists, negative climate trends like these are only going to heighten in the future. Experts have predicted that by 2071 and later, there will have been a thirty-fold increase in deaths caused by heatwaves in Europe, and this is at our current path of approximately 3°C of warming.

If this rate climbs to 4°C, which is very much a possibility, heatwaves surpassing 40°C would take place more than 30 times a year in Western Europe, an occurrence that would quadruple the risk of deadly forest fires across the region.

Catarina Mota, 20, like many other young people around the world, says that the climate crisis has affected her emotional and physical well-being, and that governments need to act on warnings backed by scientific evidence. Another young woman, Sofia Oliveira, age 15, says that young people all over the world are very much aware of how dangerous the future could really be.

“We have seen unbearable heatwaves that cause water shortages and damage food production, and violent wildfires that give us anxiety and make us afraid to travel through our country’s forests… If we already see these extremes in 2020 what will the future be like?”

Sofia Oliveira

The young applicants are represented by British barristers who are experts in environmental law, specifically climate change law, including Marc Willers QC. Aside from having legislative support, they are also backed by Global Legal Action Network, an NGO that managed to raise roughly £27,000 through crowdfunding.

The court will first have to determine whether or not the case is admissible. If they deem it admissible, it will then proceed to rule on the merits of the case itself, a process that could take months or years.

Since 1990, the world has seen over 1,200 climate lawsuits, and the most successful of these took place in the Netherlands, where the Urgenda Foundation managed to force the government into reducing coal-fired power plants and complying with other measures valued at around €3bn.

This is the first time the European Court of Human Rights is dealing with an issue that affects the system of rules it was designed to protect, seeing as multiple UN experts, including special rapporteur Philip Alston, have said that human rights are going to be negatively impacted by disasters related to climate change.

“This is a culmination of all the campaigning that the youth movement are engaged in. Now they are asking the courts to step up. This is a last-ditch effort to put the ship back on a course that doesn’t involve catastrophic climate change. It is the youth who stand to be discriminated against. They bear the burden in terms of risk.”

Gearóid Ó Cuinn, Director of the Global Legal Action Network

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