In landmark climate ruling, European court faults Switzerland

LONDON — Europe’s top human rights court said Tuesday that the Swiss government had violated its citizens’ rights by not doing enough to stop climate change, a landmark ruling that experts said could bolster activists hoping to use human rights law to hold governments to account.

In the case, which was brought by a group called KlimaSeniorinnen, or Senior Women for Climate Protection, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, said Switzerland had failed to meet its target in reducing carbon emissions and must act to address that shortcoming.

The women, 64 and older, said their health was at risk during heat waves related to global warming. They argued that the Swiss government, by not doing enough to mitigate against global warming, had violated their rights.

It is the latest decision in a broader wave of climate-related lawsuits that aim to push governments to act against global warming, and countries’ domestic courts have handled similar cases. But experts said it was the first instance of an international court determining that governments were legally obligated to meet their climate targets under human rights law.

“It is the first time that an international court has affirmed clearly that a climate crisis is a human rights crisis,” said Joie Chowdhury, a senior lawyer with the Center for International Environmental Law, an international group that voiced its support for KlimaSeniorinnen’s case.

Although the decision is legally binding, experts say that states are ultimately responsible for complying.

Annalisa Savaresi, a professor of environmental law at the University of East Finland, said she expected the country to heed the court’s ruling. “Simply because Switzerland is Switzerland: It’s a rule-of-law state, it’s not a rogue state,” she said. “They are keen to be seen as doing the right thing.”

With many other countries failing to meet their climate targets, the ruling could also encourage more members of the public to sue, experts said.

“I expect we’re going to see a rash of lawsuits in other European countries, because most of them have done the same thing,” said Michael Gerrard, the director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University in New York. “They have failed to meet their climate goals, and failed to set climate targets that are adequate.”

Climate lawyers also hope the ruling will inform other upcoming opinions by international courts, including the International Court of Justice.

The European ruling, Gerrard said, was unlikely to affect court decisions in the United States, where states, cities and counties are suing fossil fuel companies over the damages caused by climate change and young people are filing lawsuits over what they say is a failure by the state and federal governments to protect them from the effects of global warming.

But, Gerrard said, “the idea that climate change impaired fundamental rights resonated throughout the cases.”