The case is part of a lawsuit launched two years ago and the hearing will begin Thursday, a court source confirmed to CNN.
The process was initiated by four NGOs, including Greenpeace France and Oxfam France, after an online petition that gathered 2.3 million signatures – the largest in French history, according to the organizers.
Climate activists took to the streets near the Paris administrative court on Thursday morning. Images provided by the NGOs displayed a giant banner that read: “We are 2.3 million”.
Signatories expect the court to “compel the state to take all necessary measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions” to meet the 1.5 degree Celsius (2.7 degree Fahrenheit) target set by the Paris Agreement, says the online petition.
The Paris Agreement, a pact signed in 2016 by almost every country in the world, aims to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) and to endeavor to limit it to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).
Currently, the world is expected to warm up to 2.7 degrees Celsius (4.86 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century, according to the Climate Action Tracker (CAT) – a non-profit analysis group that tracks government climate action. This will bring about more extreme storms, heat waves, greater sea level rise and, in many parts of the world, worse droughts and extreme rains.
French activists also want recognition of “the state’s climate inaction, that is, France’s failure to fulfill its commitments”.
“Greenhouse gas emissions under this government’s five-year mandate have fallen at a rate twice as slow as the trajectories foreseen by the law,” the NGOs said in a joint statement.
In a legal memorandum seen by NGOs and the newspaper Le Monde in June last year, the French Environment Ministry denied that it had failed to fulfill its legal obligations to combat climate change and asked that the case be closed.
One of the arguments put forward by the government is that it cannot be considered “solely responsible” for climate change in France, according to the memo published by Le Monde.
“France represents about 1% of the world’s population and emits about 1% of the planet’s greenhouse gases each year,” said the document.
“A substantial part of this pollution comes from industrial and agricultural activities”, but also from “individual choices and decisions that it is not always possible to influence”, the memo continues.
CNN contacted the Ministry of the Environment for comment.
The verdict of the case is expected in 15 days, the NGOs said in their statement.
Legal action on climate change has become a global phenomenon, according to a report published in July 2019. On that date, lawsuits had been initiated against governments and corporate interests in 28 countries, according to a report by the Grantham Research Institute London School of Economics and Political Science.
The researchers found that while the United States was the global leader in climate change litigation, the prevalence of such processes has spread across the world.
Sandrine Amiel and Gaëlle Fournier reported from Paris, France. Jack Guy wrote from London.