The case is part of a case that was launched two years ago and the trial will begin on Thursday, a forensic source confirmed to CNN.
The lawsuit was filed by four NGOs, including Greenpeace France and Oxfam France, following an online petition that collected 2.3 million signatures – according to the organizers the largest in French history.
Climate activists took to the streets near the administrative tribunal in Paris on Thursday morning. Images provided by the NGOs showed a giant banner with the caption: “We are 2.3 million.”
The signatories hope that the court will “force the state to take all necessary measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions” to reach the target of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) set in the Paris Agreement, reads the online petition.
The Paris Agreement, an agreement entered into by almost all countries of the world in 2016, seeks to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) and aims to reduce it to 1 , 5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).
Currently, by the end of the century, the world will be warming by 2.7 degrees Celsius (4.86 degrees Fahrenheit), according to the Climate Action Tracker (CAT) – a non-profit analysis group that follows the government’s climate action. This will lead to more extreme storms, heat waves, higher sea level rise, and in many parts of the world worse droughts and extreme rainfall.
French fighters also want to acknowledge ‘the state’s climate activity, ie the fulfillment by France of its obligations’.
“Emissions of greenhouse gases during the five-year term of office have fallen at a rate twice as slow as the laws predicted by law,” the NGOs said in a joint statement.
In a legal memorandum seen by the NGOs and the Le Monde newspaper in June last year, the French Ministry of Environment denied that it had not complied with its legal obligations to fight climate change and rejected the case. .
One of the arguments put forward by the government is that, according to Le Monde’s notes, it cannot “be held solely responsible for climate change in France.
“France makes up about 1% of the world’s population and emits about 1% of the planet’s greenhouse gases annually,” he said.
‘A significant part of this pollution comes from industrial and agricultural activities’, but also from ‘individual choices and decisions that are not always possible to influence’, the memorandum continued.
CNN contacted the Department of the Environment for comment.
A ruling in the case is expected within 15 days, the NGOs said in their statement.
Legal action against climate change has become a global phenomenon, according to a report published in July 2019. By that date, lawsuits against governments and corporate interests had been launched in 28 countries, according to a report by the Grantham Research Institute at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Researchers have found that although the US has been the world leader in climate change lawsuits, the prevalence of such lawsuits has spread worldwide.
Sandrine Amiel and Gaëlle Fournier reported from Paris, France. Jack Guy wrote from London.