What has climate change got to do with the ECHR?

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has delivered a landmark judgement, effectively ruling that governments have a duty to protect people from climate change.

In Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and Others v Switzerland – a case brought against the Swiss state by a group of elderly Swiss women – the ECHR has ruled that the Swiss government failed to implement ‘sufficient measures’ to combat climate change. According to the court’s judgement, there have been ‘critical gaps in the process of putting in place the relevant domestic regulatory framework, including a failure by the Swiss authorities to quantify, through a carbon budget or otherwise, national greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions limitations’. The ECHR has decided that Switzerland’s supposedly inadequate attempts to tackle climate change violate Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees the ‘right to respect for private and family life’.

This is a hugely significant judgement given that it will affect all 46 countries signed up to the ECHR, including the UK. The ECHR found that four individual applicants also seeking to challenge Switzerland over climate change did not have ‘victim status’. This means they did not have the legal status to bring a case to the ECHR. However, it agreed that Senior Women for Climate Protection Switzerland (KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz), a group that represents over 2,000 women, did meet the specific ‘victim status’ criteria. This allowed the group, rather than the individuals, to bring the litigation forward. So this ruling does not mean that anyone can now launch a human-rights challenge against his or her government over climate change. But it does arguably open the door for NGOs and other campaign groups to do so.

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