According to The Wall Street Journal, the European Court of Human Rights sided with a group of senior adult individuals who had filed legal claims against the government over its alleged failures to adequately address climate change.
A group of more than , 2, 000 European women , over the age of 64 alleged that the European government’s climate change plans were in violation of the right to life and other rules of the European Convention on Human Rights, and the judge ruled in its favour in its first choice relate directly to climate change,  , The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.
In most of Europe, the decision establishes a new precedent that could spur related lawsuits against federal government and business.
According to Tom Cummins, a companion at a world rules firm called Ashurst,” Climate campaigners are likely to draw the conclusion that states have good obligations under human rights law in relation to climate change and use that as the foundation for future claims against states that they deem not to be moving fast enough to solve the threat of climate change,”
Additionally, businesses and financial institutions will want to carefully review these cases. Human rights arguments are frequently used in corporate climate litigation, including in controversial cases like the one involving Shell in the Netherlands. This kind of claims are likely to be fueled by the decision in the case against Switzerland.
The European Court of Human Rights ‘ Tuesday decision will likely encourage similar lawsuits against national governments in Europe,  , according , to Reuters. Prior to the court’s decision to issue the landmark ruling in the Swiss women’s case, the Norwegian government sued the government, alleging that it had violated human rights by issuing oil and gas exploration licenses.
Greta Thunberg, a prominent European climate activist, thinks that the Swiss women’s lawsuit is the start of a barrage of European climate lawsuits to come. A panel for the United Nations has  , suggested , that children should sue their governments for perceived negligence on climate change.
” This is only the beginning of climate litigation”, Thunberg , told , Reuters. No way do we lean back, according to the results of this. This means that we have to fight even more, since this is only the beginning”.
The plaintiffs were senior women specifically because people 55 years old and above, and women especially, face increased risks of death related to heat, giving them standing to sue the Swiss government for its purported failures to stem the effects of climate change,  , according , to Axios. The Swiss women’s decision by the European Court of Human Rights is final, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The European Court of Human Rights heard two similar climate cases on Tuesday, but each one was dismissed. In one of those cases, a group of Portuguese youths sued a group of 32 European nations, and a French mayor sued the French national government in another.
Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation
