See you in court, citizens tell governments on climate change

(Reuters, 17 Jan 2019) Legal actions are based on the principle that governments must meet their obligations under human rights law and the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change.

Environmentalists in France and Ireland are pushing forward with legal cases aimed at forcing their governments to step up action on climate change, motivated by a 2018 flagship ruling that the Netherlands must cut emissions faster to keep its people safe.

In October, a Dutch appeals court said the government had "done too little to prevent the dangers of climate change and is doing too little to catch up", ordering it to ensure planet-warming emissions are at least 25 percent below 1990 levels by the end of 2020.

Tessa Khan, a lawyer with the Urgenda Foundation which brought the Dutch case on behalf of nearly 900 citizens, said this and other ongoing climate legal actions are based on the principle that governments must meet their obligations under human rights law and the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change.

"(These cases) all spring from the same sort of inspiration and the broad notion that our governments have the duty to protect us from threats of this scale that they have contributed to knowingly," said Khan, who is co-director of the Climate Litigation Network.

In France, four non-governmental groups, including Greenpeace and Oxfam, fired the starting gun on Dec. 17.

They sent a "preliminary request for compensation" in a 41-page letter to the French prime minister and a dozen government ministers, denouncing the state for failing to take concrete and effective measures to combat climate change.

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Reuters, 17 Jan 2019: See you in court, citizens tell governments on climate change