Human Rights Law: Where Environmental Initiatives Go to Die
9th May 2024
With an April 9, 2024, ruling against Switzerland for its failure to meet climate change targets, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has opened up a vast new market for the human rights law industry: potential climate change lawsuits against 46 member states of the Council of Europe. But by pulling climate-change activism deeper into the abstract and toothless realm of international human rights legislation, the ECHR ruling further removes it from domestic politics, where actual policy change can be effected. Moreover, it further confuses the meaning and efficacy of human rights legislation itself.
The case, Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and Others v. Switzerland, was brought by a group of women, all over 64 years of age, who claim that their health is threatened by heat waves. Switzerland only reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 11% between 2013 and 2020, missing its 20% pledge. Swiss authorities argued that climate policies lie outside the scope of international human rights law. But according to an official document, the Court found that under Article 2, protecting the right to life, the European Convention on Human Rights “encompasses a right to effective protection by the State authorities from the serious adverse effects of climate change on lives, health, well-being and quality of life. … The Court found that the Swiss Confederation had failed to comply with its duties (“positive obligations”) under the Convention concerning climate change.”
Climate change’s putative threat to human rights has long been a prominent topic in international organizations, and is often a vehicle for demands for compensation from groups claiming to be victims of pollution from the developed world. Leading Swiss and other European media commentators praised the European Court ruling for “elevating climate protection to the status of a human right,” thus setting a precedent for other international courts. Not surprisingly, the decision has been applauded by activists as the first affirmation by an international court that “a climate crisis is a human rights crisis,” according to a lawyer for the Center for International Environmental Law.