Courts could deal more frequently with climate and environmental issues in the future. That's what the German judge Angelika Nussberger said. The climate issue could be brought to the courts based on fundamental rights, said the Vice President at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg. After nine years, Nußberger left office at the end of the year.
The European Convention on Human Rights, which all member states of the Council of Europe have to sign before admission, is a good tool to respond to environmental damage, said the judge. A good example of this is a complaint to the ECHR from the 1990s, said Nussberger.
At that time, the court awarded a Spanish woman around 4.5 million Spanish peseta (now around 35,000 euros) because he felt that the authorities had not done enough to protect the woman and her relatives from vapors from a waste processing factory next to her house.
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Just last week, judges in the Netherlands had approved the environmental protection organization Urgenda, which had campaigned on behalf of almost 900 Dutch citizens for more climate protection. The government had made several appeals, but lost them to the Supreme Court. Prime Minister Mark Rutte's government is now committed to reducing emissions in the Netherlands by a quarter by 2020 compared to 1990 levels.
Climate change and its consequences would "threaten the life, well-being and living environment of many people, worldwide and also in the Netherlands", the judges wrote in their reasoning.
Experts classify the legal decision as pioneering for further lawsuits of this kind. David Boyd, the United Nations' special rapporteur on human rights and the environment, spoke of "the world's most important court decision on climate change to date".
The judges in the Netherlands also cited ECHR case law. Accordingly, the signatory states are obliged to "take appropriate measures if there is a real and immediate risk to the life and well-being of people and the state knows about it," it said.
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Nußberger has been the German voice at the Human Rights Court since 2011, and since 2017 the 56-year-old has also been the ECHR Vice President. The lawyer and university lecturer Anja Seibert-Fohr will take office on January 1st. After the end of her term in office, Nussberger will again teach at the University of Cologne and represent Germany in the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe, which advises states on constitutional law.
The ECHR is not part of the European Union, but of the Council of Europe. The state organization promotes democratic development in its 47 member countries - in addition to the EU countries, Turkey and Russia also belong to the Council of Europe.
Those who believe that their fundamental rights have been violated can call the ECHR founded in 1959. The hurdles for recognition are high, however, and most of the complaints are dismissed. First and foremost, the nation states should protect fundamental rights. In Germany, for example, the Federal Constitutional Court must first dismiss a plaintiff so that he can even turn to Strasbourg.
Climate complaints had recently also occurred in Germany. Three families and Greenpeace wanted to legally force the federal government to still meet the climate protection targets for 2020. But judges of the Berlin Administrative Court dismissed the lawsuit.
