In the name of climate #9: the young people taking action against governments due to climate change

In recent years hordes of young people across the world have turned to the courts for matters related to the climate: in the Netherlands, at the initiative of 21-year-old Damian Rau, the Supreme Court ordered the central government to do more to tackle climate change in order to respect human rights.

That’s not all: six young people from Portugal – between 9 and 22 years of age – with the support of the non-profit organisation Global Legal Action Network, have turned to the European Court of Human Rights to accuse 33 states of having violated human rights, due to not having taken sufficient measures intended to prevent the rise in global average temperatures. If the governments taken to court do not manage to obtain legal non-admissibility of the case, they must prove that their policies do not discriminate against the generations to come and must explain which measures have taken account of their future interests.

In Germany, on the other hand, thanks to 22-year-old Sophie Backsen, the law on reducing greenhouse gas emissions will be changed, since the Constitutional Court considered it insufficiently ambitious and strict. The German body established that one generation should not be allowed to “consume a large part of the carbon dioxide budget while bearing a relatively light burden, if that leaves subsequent generations facing a radical burden and their lives exposed to an extensive loss of freedom”, thus making reference to the commitment that will be necessary, over the coming decades, in order to cut greenhouse gas emissions if more ambitious measures are not taken in the short term.

Across the world there are more than a thousand legal cases filed in relation to climate change. Some of the countries accused by young people of not doing enough include Canada, Colombia, South Korea, Mexico, Peru and the United Kingdom. In the latter case, three students aged 19, 22 and 23 have taken action against the national law on climate, arguing, among other things, that it represents a violation of three articles of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, also cited in the case of their Portuguese peers.

The climate justice events that conclude with a ruling in favour of the young people who took action form an important precedent for this type of process and may drive more and more people to ask their governments to make better climate commitments.