Six schoolchildren from central Portugal, where this year one of the country’s worst ever forest fires killed dozens of people, are raising money by crowdfunding in order to sue 47 countries over 'failures to address climate change.'
Stating that global warming is ‘threatening their right to life,’ the children, four of whom are from Leiria, the area of central Portugal where the Pedrógão Grande fires claimed over 60 lives this summer, are being represented in Strasbourg by UK barristers.
With the assistance of NGO Global Legal Action Network, the children are seeking to raise an initial £20,000 through the crowdjustice website to fund their case in the European Court of Human Rights where they want to compel countries to reduce CO2 emissions and to leave most fossil fuel reserves under the ground. The total estimated cost is £350,000.
Marc Willers QC of Garden Court Chambers said: “This case intends to build on the successes which have been achieved through climate change litigation across the world so far.
“It will be unique because it will be the first case in which multiple governments are brought before a court at the one time in relation to their failure to properly tackle climate change.
“Climate change poses a major and increasingly worsening threat to a number of human rights and governments in Europe are simply not doing enough to address it.”
One of the children, aged 14, said, “Climate change causes many problems, but if I had to name the ones that worry me the most, it would be the rise in sea level, which leads to the destruction of shores and of infrastructure such as dams, roads and houses, and also the increase in the number of forest fires that we’ve been observing lately, especially this summer, as the fires caused many deaths and left our country in mourning.”
The action will target 47 countries including the UK, Ireland, Germany and France.
This European action, if funding is forthcoming and the case ever gets to court, follows the most important litigation to date in the US which seeks to put Donald Trump on trial, along with the head of the Environmental Protection Agency.
The 21 plaintiffs of Juliana et al. v. United States et al. - aged between 10 and to 21, have accused the US government of failing to protect future generations from climate change. The federal lawsuit was filed on their behalf by Our Children’s Trust in Oregon.
It “is no ordinary lawsuit,” wrote Judge Ann Aiken of the US District Court for the District of Oregon in a decision green-lighting a trial. “It alleges that defendants’ actions and inactions - whether or not they violate any specific statutory duty - have so profoundly damaged our home planet that they threaten plaintiffs’ fundamental constitutional rights to life and liberty.”
As for the Portuguese case, normally such applicants would have to go through all the national courts before appealing to the European Court of Human Rights but in this case, lawyers are planning to argue that the remedy they seek can only be achieved at a multinational level.
The children are aged between five and 14, as youth is important with the lawyers wanting to present the case from the children’s perspective because the children are expected to experience more global warming over their lifetime than adults.
For the Crowdjustice website and appeal, choose a language below:
