👶🏼 My daughter wasn’t even born when an association with over 2,000 elderly women lodged a complaint against the Swiss authorities requesting that they do more on climate change, because the government’s inaction was impacting their human rights.
And now she is over 7 years old, so that is telling you how long it’s been since these women started their journey of fighting for their human rights to be protected. 🕰️
But the journey was well worth it. 🛣 The complaint – that went all the way up to the Swiss Supreme Court, and then the European Court of Human Rights – and directly to its most important Chamber – the Grand Chamber, has just made history. ⏩
This is the most landmark of the landmark judgments! đź’«
The European Court relies on the latest climate science to state that climate change leads to severe human rights impacts – and that this is set to continue. Governments will now need to do a lot more to seek to limit global warming to 1.5°C as set out in the 2015 Paris Agreement. If they don’t take robust and science-based actions urgently, then according to the European Court they violate human rights law that they are obligated to comply with.
The decision cannot be appealed. ⚖️
The ripple of this landmark judgment extends beyond Switzerland, and beyond Council of Europe Member States. And the ripple extends beyond governments to the companies that they regulate.
This judgment will have a significant impact on how companies are expected to align their activities, projects and plans to meet net zero as well as how they connect their human rights due diligence with climate change.
