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Swiss women win landmark climate change case
Insights from The Guardian, The Conversation, The New York Times
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The European Court of Human Rights ruled Tuesday in favor of a group of older Swiss women who argued that their government’s failure to combat climate change put them at a higher risk of dying in heatwaves, in a landmark case for the continent.
The court ruled that the Swiss government had violated the human rights of 2,000 women over the age of 64, known as KlimaSeniorinnen, or Senior Women for Climate Protection, who argued they cannot leave their homes and suffer ill-health during frequent record hot spells.
The ruling compels Switzerland to take greater action on reducing carbon emissions, in line with targets to keep warming to below a global 1.5 C rise.
One legal expert told Reuters that the case could serve as a “blueprint for how to successfully sue your own government over climate failures.”
While it favored the Swiss women, the 17-judge European court also tossed out two other climate litigation cases on procedural grounds: one by six Portuguese youngsters against 32 European governments and another by a former mayor of a low-lying French coastal town.
“This is only the beginning of climate litigation,” activist Greta Thunberg said following the court’s decision, according to the BBC. “This means that we have to fight even more, since this is only the beginning.”
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Women are disproportionately affected by climate change
Women are disproportionately affected by the ravages of climate change, with a study applied in the Swiss women’s case estimating that 63% more women than men have died in past European heat waves. The United Nations estimates that 80% of the people displaced by climate change are women and girls, with flooding that destroys homes exacerbating existing socioeconomic disparities, for example.
“Climate change affects women more than men in key areas including farming, health, water, access to electricity, migration and conflict,” an associate law professor at the University of Bradford wrote for The Conversation. In Africa, however, few women bring climate litigation cases to court because of difficulties in obtaining data as evidence and a lack of funding for legal aid, she wrote.
Courts will play a bigger role in tackling government inaction
“The ruling reinforces the vital role of courts — both international and domestic — in holding governments to their legal obligations to protect human rights from environmental harm,” Joie Chowdhury, senior attorney at the non-profit Center for International Environmental Law, told Reuters. The total number of climate change court cases more than doubled in the five years from 2017, to 2,180 cases in 2022. Past cases in the United States include a landmark ruling in Montana, which claimed that the state’s pro-fossil fuel policies violated the constitutional rights of its youth — paving the way for upcoming court battles in Hawaii, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. “We might look back and say 2024 is the year that climate lawsuits really took off,” the president of the Center for Climate Integrity, which tracks such cases, told The Guardian.
Ruling opens the door for lawsuits across Europe
While the ruling is binding, its implementation will depend on whether Switzerland decides to take further action to reduce emissions — which one environmental law professor told The New York Times was likely. The court’s decision has legal implications for all 46 European countries that are signatories to the European Convention on Human Rights.
“Member states on the whole do abide by those rulings,” Kate Mackintosh, Executive Director of the UCLA Law Promise Institute Europe, told Semafor. “It opens the way for people in every single country who are part of this system to bring these cases domestically before their courts.”
While climate change is a global phenomenon, the ruling “comprehensively dismisses” the argument that local courts cannot issue rulings on climate legal obligations, one U.K. barrister told the BBC.
