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South Korean Court Hears First Asian Youth Climate Case
"Carbon emission reduction keeps getting pushed back as if it is homework that can be done later," said one plaintiff's mother. "But that burden will be what our children have to bear eventually."
Apr 23, 2024
One of South Korea's two highest courts on Tuesday began hearing Asia's first-ever youth-led climate lawsuit, which accuses the country's government of failing to protect citizens from the effects of the worsening, human-caused planetary emergency.
Nineteen members of the advocacy group Youth4ClimateAction filed a constitutional complaint in March 2020 accusing the South Korean government of violating their rights to life, the "pursuit of happiness," a "healthy and pleasant environment," and to "resist against human extinction."
The lawsuit also notes "the inequality between the adult generation who can enjoy the relatively pleasant environment and the youth generation who must face a potential disaster from climate change," as well as the government's obligation to prevent and protect citizens from environmental disasters.
"South Korea's current climate plans are not sufficient to keep the temperature increase within 1.5°C, thus violating the state's obligation to protect fundamental rights," the plaintiffs said in a statement.
South Korea's Constitutional Court began hearing a case that accuses the government of having failed to protect 200 people, including dozens of young environmental activists and children, by not tackling climate change https://t.co/XRIGE23KGM pic.twitter.com/snvqBaGGe9
— Reuters (@Reuters) April 23, 2024
Signatories to the 2015 Paris agreement committed to "holding the increase in global average temperature to well below 2°C above preindustrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C."
According to the United Nations Environment Program's (UNEP) most recent Emissions Gap Report, the world must slash greenhouse gas emissions by 28% before 2030 to limit warming to 2°C above preindustrial levels and 42% to halt warming at 1.5°C. UNEP said that based on current policies and practices, the world is on track for 2.9°C of warming by the end of the century.
A summary of the lawsuit notes that South Korea is the fifth-largest greenhouse gas (GHG) emitter among Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development nations, and that the government is constitutionally obligated to protect Koreans from the climate emergency.
Instead, the plaintiffs argue, the Korean Parliament "gave the government total discretion to set the GHG reduction target without providing any specific guidelines." Furthermore, they contend that the government's downgraded reduction targets fall "far short of what is necessary to satisfy the temperature rise threshold acknowledged by the global community."
Lee Donghyun, the mother of one of the plaintiffs, toldReuters: "Carbon emission reduction keeps getting pushed back as if it is homework that can be done later. But that burden will be what our children have to bear eventually."
The South Korean case comes on the heels of a landmark ruling by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which found that Switzerland's government violated senior citizens' human rights by refusing to heed scientists' warnings to swiftly phase out fossil fuel production.
The ECHR ruled on the same day that climate cases brought by a former French mayor and a group of Portuguese youth were inadmissible.
Courts in Australia, Brazil, and Peru also have human rights-based climate cases on their dockets.
In the United States, a state judge in Montana ruled last year in favor of 16 young residents who argued that fossil fuel extraction violated their constitutional right to "a clean and healthful environment."
Meanwhile, the Biden administration is trying to derail a historic youth-led climate lawsuit against the U.S. government.
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'Emissions Canyon': World on Track for 2.9°C of Warming
Keeping the 1.5°C temperature goal alive "requires tearing out the poisoned root of the climate crisis: fossil fuels," U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said.
Nov 20, 2023
Nations' current unconditional climate action plans under the Paris agreement would put the world on track for 2.9°C of warming by 2100, the United Nations Environment Program warned Monday.
The UNEP's 2023 Emissions Gap Report, released ahead of next week's U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP28) in the United Arab Emirates, finds that policymakers must slash greenhouse gas emissions by 28% by 2030 to limit warming to 2°C above preindustrial levels and 42% to halt warming at 1.5°C.
"The report shows that the emissions gap is more like an emissions canyon," U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said in a statement. "A canyon littered with broken promises, broken lives, and broken records. All of this is a failure of leadership, a betrayal of the vulnerable, and a massive missed opportunity."
The annual Emissions Gap Report calculates the difference between climate-warming emissions under current policies and what needs to be achieved to limit global heating to "well below" 2°C and ideally 1.5°C. This year's report highlighted 2023's string of broken temperature records and extreme weather events: Scientists predict it's on track to be the hottest year in 125,000 years.
At the same time, global greenhouse gas emissions rose by 1.2% between 2021 and 2022, hitting a record 57.4 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2e) last year.
"Humanity is breaking all the wrong records when it comes to climate change," UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen said in the report foreword.
"The 2023 edition of the Emissions Gap Report tells us that the world must change track, or we will be saying the same thing next year—and the year after, and the year after, like a broken record," Andersen added.
Even the report's full title expressed a sense of exasperation: Emissions Gap Report 2023: Broken Record—Temperatures hit new highs, yet world fails to cut emissions (again).
The report looked at both existing and promised policies, including countries' Paris action pledges, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs). It did find that national actions since the Paris agreement was negotiated in 2015 have made a difference. At the time, greenhouse gas emissions were projected to rise by 16% by 2030 and now they are on track to rise by 3% by the end of the decade.
But that progress is not nearly enough to avoid ever more extreme climate impacts. Currently implemented policies put the world on track for 3°C of warming by 2100, unconditional NDCs for 2.9°C, conditional NDCs for 2.5°C, and conditional NDCs combined with net-zero pledges give temperatures a 66% chance of topping out at 2°C. Under the last, most optimistic scenario, the world is left with a 14% chance of limiting warming to 1.5°C. However, net-zero pledges are not currently seen as reliable, since no Group of 20 country is on pace to reduce its emissions in line with this goal.
The report found that nations must cut their emissions by 14 GtCO2e by 2030 to reach 2°C and 22 GtCO2e to reach 1.5°C. The way this can be done is by phasing out fossil fuels as soon as possible.
"The only way to curtail this spiraling crisis is through wholesale changes to the global energy system that will sharply drive down all heat-trapping emissions."
"We know it is still possible to make the 1.5°C limit a reality. And we know how to get there—we have roadmaps from the International Energy Agency and the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change]," Guterres said. "It requires tearing out the poisoned root of the climate crisis: fossil fuels. And it demands a just, equitable renewables transition."
The report comes as nations prepare to gather on November 30 for COP28, which will include the first global stocktake of their progress toward meeting the goals of the Paris agreement. This will lead to a new round of NDCs through 2035.
"Ambition in these NDCs must bring greenhouse gas emissions in 2035 to levels consistent with the 2°C and 1.5°C pathways. Stronger implementation in this decade will help to make this possible," Andersen said in the foreword.
"The world needs to lift the needle out of the groove of insufficient ambition and action, and start setting new records on cutting emissions, green and just transitions, and climate finance—starting now," Andersen added.
In response to the report, Rachel Cleetus, the policy director and a lead economist in the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, also called for ambition at the upcoming climate talks.
"The only way to curtail this spiraling crisis is through wholesale changes to the global energy system that will sharply drive down all heat-trapping emissions," Cleetus said. "At COP28, nations must heed these scientific truths by agreeing to a fast and fair phaseout of fossil fuels, ramping up renewable energy and energy efficiency, and significantly expanding climate finance commitments from wealthier countries for an equitable clean energy transition."
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Climate Lawsuits Are Becoming Key Drivers of Change as Courts Tie Policy to Human Rights
A growing percentage of litigation has been filed in the Global South, with plaintiffs arguing they have a right to adequate climate policy.
Jul 27, 2023
With a number of international courts ruling in recent years that climate justice must be recognized as a human right, the United Nations Environment Program released a report Wednesday that found that climate litigation is emerging as a key driver of concrete action being taken by governments and corporations—forcing them to commit to emissions cuts and take accountability for harming the planet.
UNEP joined with the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University to compile the Global Climate Litigation Report: 2023 Status Review, and found that the number of climate crisis-related legal challenges filed across the world has more than doubled since the group's first analysis in 2017.
Nearly 900 climate cases were filed in 2017, while 2,180 were brought to courts in 2022.
"Climate policies are far behind what is needed to keep global temperatures below the 1.5°C threshold, with extreme weather events and searing heat already baking our planet," said Inger Andersen, executive director of UNEP. "People are increasingly turning to courts to combat the climate crisis, holding governments and the private sector accountable, and making litigation a key mechanism for securing climate action and promoting climate justice."
A majority of cases have been filed in the United States, with plaintiffs arguing government agencies and companies are failing to comply with clean air and water laws and other regulations, taking aim at companies they say have "greenwashed" their climate records, and demanding that children have the right to a safe environment, among other litigation.
But the report finds that lawsuits in the Global South represent a "growing percentage of global climate litigation," with more than 17% of lawsuits filed in developing countries including Small Island Developing States.
A majority of cases focused on residents' right to a healthy environment and demands for national climate policies that reflect that right have been filed in the Global South, according to the report.
The Brazilian Supreme Court found in 2022 that the Paris climate agreement should be treated as a human rights treaty with "supranational status," invalidating any Brazilian law that contradicts the agreement's demand that nations reduce their greenhouse gas emissions in order to limit planetary heating to 1.5°C over preindustrial levels.
In Mexico in 2020, the Supreme Court invalidated a rule that would have allowed a higher ethanol content in gasoline, "concluding that the right to a healthy environment and the precautionary principle required the evaluation of the potential of increased GHG emissions and an analysis of the country's commitments under the Paris Agreement," reads the report.
In addition to federal courts in individual nations, international human rights panels have handed down landmark rulings in recent years, forcing companies and governments to change course on the climate.
The United Nations Human Rights Committee last year found that Australia had failed to adequately protect Indigenous Torres Straight Islanders from climate impacts, recognizing that "climate change was currently impacting the claimants' daily lives and that, to the extent that their rights are being violated, Australia's poor climate record was a violation of their right to family life and right to culture."
Australian officials were ordered to adopt "significant climate adaptation measures" as a result of the historic ruling.
Plaintiffs in recently filed lawsuits may benefit from "an increasingly well-defined field of law" which has begun to provide an understanding of the human right to adequate climate policy, said UNEP and the Sabin Center.
As Common Dreams reported in March, a coalition of elderly women in Switzerland argued before the European Court of Human Rights that they are uniquely affected by insufficient climate action and by continued fossil fuel extraction, as older people are vulnerable to the extreme temperatures that the climate crisis is causing.
A number of similar cases have been brought by children who have argued—in Australia, the U.S., Argentina, Haiti, and elsewhere—that their rights have been violated by their government's continued backing of fossil fuel emissions, improper waste disposal, and support for coal expansion.
Ongoing climate litigation largely centers on:
- Cases underpinned by international human rights laws;
- Challenges to domestic non-enforcement of climate-related laws and policies;
- Efforts to keep fossil fuels in the ground;
- Demands for corporate climate disclosures and liability and an end to greenwashing; and
- Challenges to governments' failure to adapt to the impacts of climate change, including extreme heat and sea level rise.
Future cases are likely to also focus on climate migration, as more than 30 million people were displaced in 2020 due to weather and climate events; demands for legal remedies after an extreme weather event has destroyed homes or businesses; and plaintiffs' claims that their harms were in fact caused by the climate emergency.
"Since 2020, few courts have yet to reach the merits of these types of claims, despite the growing body of science illustrating the connections," reads the report. "The science of climate attribution continues to be central to climate litigation, and as more cases are filed and reach the merits of the plaintiffs' claims, as was anticipated in the 2020 Litigation Report, there will be increased judicial attention on the matter."
As companies and governments seek to deny responsibility for climate harms, litigation targeting climate protesters may also be part of a "backlash" against campaigners' lawsuits, said UNEP and the Sabin Center.
In some high-profile cases recently, protesters have emerged victorious when their actions have been the target of litigation.
As the Sabin Center noted, a New Zealand District Court ruled in 2020 that without direct action like that of protesters who trespassed on an oil platform, "change may be too late." The campaigners were convicted but discharged without penalty.
In 2021, activists who halted operations at Charles De Gaulle Airport in Paris were acquitted because a court found their actions "were taken in a 'state of necessity' to warn of future danger, namely climate change."
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