A top European court found Tuesday that Switzerland violated human rights by failing to slow the impact of global warming — a landmark ruling hailed by climate activists even as the court tossed out two other cases that activists had hoped could force governments to protect their citizens from climate change.
Tuesday’s hearings on the trio of cases at the European Court of Human Rights marked the first time an international court has ruled on such cases of climate change inaction, as advocacy groups and lawmakers around the world try to spur governments to take stronger action on climate change through legislation.
The court sided with the Swiss group Senior Women for Climate Protection, otherwise known as KlimaSeniorinnen, which comprises more than 2,000 senior women. Their complaint said the government’s failure to mitigate the effects of global warming harmed their living conditions and health.
The ruling said Switzerland has failed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions fast enough to meet its own targets. The European Convention on Human Rights “encompasses a right to effective protection” by national authorities “from the serious adverse effects of climate change on lives, health, well-being and quality of life,” it said.
The European Court of Human Rights, based in Strasbourg, France, is part of the Council of Europe — a 46-member international organization that is separate from the European Union. The court hands down binding decisions, but governments do not always comply.
Still, the decision Tuesday shows how governments can potentially be held to account in court for climate-related issues, and could influence similar litigation worldwide.
“We expect this ruling to influence climate action and climate litigation across Europe and far beyond,” said Joie Chowdhury, a senior attorney for the Center for International Environmental Law. The judgment “leaves no doubt: The climate crisis is a human rights crisis, and [countries] have human rights obligations to act urgently and effectively.”
Two other cases accusing European governments of not doing enough to prevent climate change — one by a former mayor in northern France and another by group of young people in Portugal — were tossed out as inadmissible.
In the French case, the court said the former mayor “had no relevant links” with his onetime town, Grande-Synthe, and had moved from France. In the Portugal case, the court said the group of young people hadn’t pursued available legal avenues domestically and that “no jurisdiction could be established” for the other European countries the group had tried to include in the case.
Lawyers had hoped for a decisive win for all three cases in the Strasbourg court that could ripple across the continent and set a clear legal precedent that governments must commit to climate change pledges.
In the high-profile case by six young people in Portugal born between 1999 and 2012, the complaint argued that existing and future effects of climate change, including heat waves and wildfires, exposed them to harm. They blamed Portugal and 32 other countries for failing to meet targets to reduce emissions set under the 2015 Paris climate accord.
The Swiss women’s association — with an average member age of 73 — had contended that their demographic was the most vulnerable to climate change, especially during heat waves. A study published last year, looking at Europe’s scorching 2022 summer, found more than 61,000 heat-related deaths. Some 63 percent of the deaths were among women; the vast majority of those people had been elderly.
The Swiss women said that Switzerland had taken “insufficient” measures to mitigate climate change, and claimed this violated several human rights principles, including the right to life.
“The world has never seen a threat to human rights of the scope presented by climate change,” Jessica Simor, a lawyer representing the women, said in court last year.
The Climate Action Tracker, an independent research group, calls Switzerland’s climate-related policies and actions “insufficient,” and noted that the country was using bilateral carbon offset deals to help negate some of its domestic emissions. The country, like many others, has pledged to reach net zero by 2050. Alain Chablais, a lawyer representing Switzerland, told the court last year that the country was “constantly raising the level of its ambitions.”
After the decision, Switzerland’s federal office of justice, which represents the country at the human rights court, called the judgment “final.”
“The comprehensive judgment will be analyzed with the authorities concerned, and the measures which Switzerland has to take for the future will be examined.”
Elisabeth Stern, a board member of Senior Women for Climate Protection Switzerland, said the feeling was “unbelievable” after years of work.
“It took me a while until the pen dropped,” she said from Strasbourg, where she watched the hearing.
“Whatever improvement the Swiss government will now hopefully accelerate in terms of climate policy, it’s for the younger generation to benefit,” she said. “I’m now 76 years old, but the next generation hopefully can gain from what we did today.”