A court in Paris has found the French the government blames it for not adequately addressing climate change, in an important statement advocating for climate change we call it the “case of the century”.
Four environmental groups – Greenpeace France, It’s Everyone’s Business, Oxfam France and the Foundation for Nature and Mankind – have filed the case in 2018 after 2.3 million people signed a petition expressing dissatisfaction with the French government’s efforts handled to limit global warming.
The lawsuit accused the French government of failing to meet its obligations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in line with its obligations under the 2015 Paris climate agreement and related French laws.
In its ruling issued on Wednesday, the court agrees and holds the French state responsible for failures in “implementing public policies to achieve the goals it has set for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”
The judges also ruled that there was a link between the ecological damage caused and the government’s failures, and that the French state should be ‘held accountable’.
However, the court emphasized that compensation is “primarily in kind”, meaning that the French government is responsible for correcting the ecological damage caused by the failure to achieve its emission targets, but is not financially responsible. The court awarded the NGOs one euro in a symbolic move acknowledging their demands.
The French government now has two months to respond to the decision. Meanwhile, the court is taking more time to investigate the ecological damage that has been done.
Cécile Duflot, the executive director of Oxfam France, called the decision “a historic victory for climate justice”.
“For the first time, a French court has ruled that the state can be held accountable for its climate commitments,” Duflot told Reuters.
The French government has been held accountable for failing to meet its climate goals
The Paris Agreement sets a goal of limiting the rise in world average temperatures below 2 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, and ideally closer to 1.5 ° C (compared to temperatures before the Industrial Revolution).
The international agreement, signed by nearly 200 countries, including France, is voluntary, meaning that there are no defined penalties for countries that do not meet their emission reduction targets.
However, as part of its efforts to achieve these targets, in June 2019, France set out its goal of having net carbon emissions in law by 2050. To achieve this, the French government has promised to reduce the country’s greenhouse gas emissions by 1.5 percent each year, and by 2025 annually by 3 percent.
But it comes nowhere near the target.
From 2015-2018, France emitted 18 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year, 4 percent more than planned. Two sectors had a particularly strong record during the period: transport exceeded its emissions budget by 11 percent and construction by 23 percent.
The environmental groups are concerned about this lack of progress and decide to take legal action. And they are not the only ones looking to the justice system to hold their governments accountable.
Climate Lawsuits Around The World
A ‘rapid increase in climate action’ is taking place around the world, according to a report by the United Nations Environment 2020 (UNEP).
In 2017, there were 884 climate issues in 24 countries. By July 1, 2020, at least 1,550 climate change cases had been filed in 38 countries, nearly doubling the number of climate lawsuits over that time period.
According to the UNEP report, governments are mostly the culprits in the climate change litigation. But two cases in particular stand out in their similarities with the French example.
The first is a 2019 case, Urgenda Foundation v. State of the Netherlands, in which the Dutch Supreme Court ruled that the Netherlands is responsible for taking the necessary measures to address climate change under the European Convention on Human Rights.
And in another 2020 case, Friends of the Irish Environment v. Government of Ireland, The Supreme Court of Ireland has overturned the country’s National Mitigation Plan for 2017 for failing to comply with the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act. The court found that the 2017 plan “lacks good” requirements, so the Irish government must now draw up a new plan.
Similar to the French court decision, the plaintiffs in the Dutch and Irish cases “argued that the national [greenhouse gas] policies are insufficiently aggressive to comply with national commitments to mitigate climate change. ”
The authors of the UN report argue that the dramatic increase in climate change around the world will be a driving force to bring action on climate change. And it seems that the environmental groups involved in the French case feel the same way.
Cécilia Rinaudo, the director of It’s Everyone’s Business, one of the groups involved in the French case, described Wednesday’s verdict as a victory for all the people already facing the devastating impact of the climate crisis. our leaders do not tackle. ‘
“The time has come for justice,” Rinaudo said.