Incorporating International Climate Change Law to Maintain the ECHR’s Relevance Amid the Climate Crisis “Everything could be different – and yet there is almost nothing I can change.” This is, as Niklas Luhmann observed, the paradoxical blend that modern democracies impose on citizens, inviting either utopianism or fatalism. Disillusionment with the transformative potential of democracy is indeed widespread in the face of the “rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all” on the one hand (see also paras. 118 & 542), and the often  ..read more

The climate rulings of the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) are landmark decisions. However, it is not obvious what they mean precisely for the State parties of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Have we witnessed, in Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz, a landslide victory for the activists that will revolutionize domestic climate law? Or do the two other decisions in which the Grand Chamber dismissed the applications preponderate? Milanović has rightly pointed out that the judgment in Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz is “very sophisticated.” All three ruli ..read more

Solar PV Project in Cuba (Photo credit: IRENA) Today, the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law and Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) jointly published a new report titled Building a Cleaner, More Resilient Energy System in Cuba: Opportunities and Challenges. The report provides detailed information on the current state of Cuba’s electricity sector and recommends reforms to advance the transition to a lower emission, reliable, and more climate resilient system. The recommendations include possible changes to Cuban domestic policies to, among other things, encourage greater public and private inve ..read more

On April 9, 2024, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) issued its first-ever findings concerning climate change. This post, part of a series on the ECtHR decisions, discusses Duarte Agostinho and Others v. 32 Member States. The case was brought by six youth applicants from Portugal, who alleged breaches of Articles 2, 3, 8 and 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) based on the present and future impacts of climate change, including heatwaves and wildfires, caused by the respondent States’ greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Like the landmark decision in the KlimaSeniorinnen c ..read more

Photo by Andriy Onufriyenko/Getty Images   Last week was big for green bank champions. On Thursday April 4th, the Environmental Protection Agency announced $20 billion of awards from the $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF) created under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Three applicants were selected under the $14 billion National Clean Investment Fund, and five were selected under the $6 billion Clean Communities Investment Accelerator. The remaining $7 billion is set aside for the fund’s Solar for All program, which will launch later this year. It’s the end of a decade-lon ..read more

States’ extraterritorial jurisdiction was one of the hot topics decided by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in Duarte Agostinho. Strictly speaking, the “lack of it” led the ECtHR to declare the complaint inadmissible with respect to all defendant States except Portugal. This finding is in line with previous ECtHR case law but highlights a gap in human rights protection and creates a mismatch between the ECtHR’s case law and that of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) and the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). As part of the symposium on the climate ruling ..read more

The much-awaited European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) Grand Chamber rulings in three key climate cases have arrived, with two ruled inadmissible (Carême v. France and Duarte Agostinho and Others v. Portugal and 32 Others) and one, brought by senior Swiss women, successful on the merits Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and Others v. Switzerland (“KlimaSeniorinnen”). An introduction to the blog symposium can be found here. Although the KlimaSeniorinnen judgment discusses a number of rights of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), including Article 6 (right of access to a court), Arti ..read more

The three much-awaited judgments issued by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) on April 9, 2024 are truly historic and unprecedented. In Verein Klimaseniorinnen Schweiz and Others v. Switzerland, the Grand Chamber established that climate change is “one of the most pressing issues of our times” and poses a threat to human rights. With this ruling, the Court confirmed that States have a positive obligation to adopt measures to mitigate climate change under Article 8 of the ECHR, the right to family and private life. According to the Court, Switzerland failed to comply with this obligati ..read more

In a transformative moment for European and global climate litigation, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruled today that the state has a positive duty to adopt, and effectively implement in practice, regulations and measures capable of mitigating the existing and potentially irreversible future effects of climate change. In Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and Others v. Switzerland (“KlimaSeniorinnen”), the Court held that by failing to put in place a domestic regulatory framework for climate change mitigation, the Swiss government violated Article 8 of the European Convention on Hum ..read more

Youth4ClimateAction in Republic of Korea We are in a critical decade for action on climate change. The world is on track to experience 3°C of warming and the “window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all” is rapidly closing.  National governments are the most important systemic actors in the governance of climate action, primarily because they are the only actors with the ability to adopt economy-wide decarbonization measures. However, the vast majority are failing to adopt and implement adequate mitigation policies. States’ inadequate responses to the climate ..read more