A Paris court ruled that the French government is guilty of failing to adequately address climate change in a historic decision that climate advocates are calling it “case of the century”.
Four environmental groups – Greenpeace France, It’s All Business, Oxfam France and the Foundation for Nature and Humanity – filed the case in 2018 after 2.3 million people signed a petition expressing dissatisfaction with the way the French government was dealing with their efforts to curb global warming.
The lawsuit accused the French government of failing to meet its obligations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, in line with its commitments in the 2015 Paris climate agreement and related French laws.
In its decision issued on Wednesday, the court agreed, holding the French State responsible for failures in “implementing public policies that would allow it to achieve the objectives it set for reducing greenhouse gas emissions”.
The judges also determined that there is a link between the ecological damage caused and the government’s failures, and that the French state “must be held responsible”.
However, the court emphasized that the compensation is “mainly in kind”, which means that the French government is responsible for fixing the ecological damage caused by not meeting its emissions targets, but is not financially responsible. Instead, the court granted NGOs a euro in a symbolic move that recognizes their claims.
The French government now has two months to respond to the decision. In the meantime, the court is taking longer to examine the ecological damage caused.
Cécile Duflot, 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 responsible for its climate commitments,” said Duflot, according to Reuters.
The French government was held responsible because the country did not meet its climate goals
The Paris agreement sets a goal to limit the increase in global average temperatures below 2 degrees Celsius and, ideally, closer to 1.5 ° C (compared to temperatures before the Industrial Revolution), by the end of the century.
The international agreement, signed by almost 200 countries, including France, is voluntary, which means that there are no defined penalties for countries that do not meet their emission reduction targets.
As part of its efforts to meet these targets, however, France in June 2019 enshrined its goal of having net zero carbon emissions by 2050 in law. To achieve this, the French government has pledged to cut the country’s greenhouse gas emissions by 1.5% per year and 3% per year from 2025.
But it didn’t even come close to that target.
From 2015-2018, France emitted 18 million tons of CO2 equivalent per year, 4% more than planned. Two sectors had a particularly difficult record in the period: transport exceeded its emissions budget by 11% and construction by 23%.
Alarmed at the lack of progress, environmental groups decided to take legal action. And they are not the only ones who seek the legal system to hold their governments accountable.
Climate processes are emerging around the world
A “rapid increase in climate disputes” is happening around the world, according to a report by the United Nations Environment Program 2020 (UNEP).
In 2017, 884 climatic cases were recorded in 24 countries. As of July 1, 2020, at least 1,550 cases of climate change had been filed in 38 countries, almost doubling the amount of climate disputes during that period.
According to the UNEP report, governments are the most frequent defendants in climate change litigation. But two cases in particular stand out for their similarities to the French example.
The first is a case of 2019, Urgenda Foundation v. Netherlands State, in which the Dutch Supreme Court ruled that the Netherlands is responsible for taking the necessary measures to deal with climate change in accordance with the European Convention on Human Rights.
And in another case of 2020, Ireland’s Friends of the Environment v. Government of Ireland, The Supreme Court of Ireland rejected the 2017 National Mitigation Plan because it did not comply with the 2015 Low Carbon Climate Action and Development Act. The court concluded that the 2017 plan was “well below” the requirements, so the Irish government must now create a new plan.
Similar to the French court’s decision, the plaintiffs in the Dutch and Irish cases “argued that [greenhouse gas] policies are insufficiently aggressive to be consistent with national climate change mitigation obligations ”.
The authors of the UN report argue that the dramatic increase in climate cases worldwide will be a driving force in action against climate change. And it seems that the environmental groups involved in the French case feel the same way.
Cécilia Rinaudo, director of É Negócios de Todo Mundo, one of the groups involved in the French case, called Wednesday’s court decision “a victory for all people who are already facing the devastating impact of the climate crisis that our leaders have not managed to face ”.
“The time has come for justice,” said Rinaudo.