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Actio popularis law definition12/17/2023 ![]() ![]() Rather, the Federal Constitution commits all courts to adhere to federal statutory law enacted and international law adopted by Federal Parliament even if such acts are found to be unconstitutional. Swiss procedural law does not allow for abstract review of federal legislation. This culminated in the founding of the Association (German: ‘ Verein’) ‘ KlimaSeniorinnen ’ – a portmanteau word composed of ‘Klima’ (German for ‘climate’) and ‘Seniorinnen’ (German for ‘senior female citizens’ or ‘elderly women’) – whose statutory aim is confined to promoting effective climate protection, in particular by lodging ‘legal actions at the federal level in order to safeguard the interests of its members’. ![]() Emboldened by the success of the motion brought by ‘Stichting Urgenda’ (‘Urgenda Foundation’), a Dutch NGO, against the Dutch Government, ‘Greenpeace Switzerland’, the national branch of another NGO, sought advice on how to initiate similar proceedings against Swiss federal authorities. ![]() Strategic climate change litigation against the Swiss Federal GovernmentĪmid such political stalemate rooted in collective action problems, some tend to place their hopes in courts. On the contrary: each country, following its own narrow self-interest, is inclined to freeride – i.e., to forgo investments to decrease its domestic GHG-emissions and to reap some of the benefits of the costly reductions made by others instead. As each ton of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere anywhere on Earth at any given time had, has and will have an almost identical effect on the average global temperature, there is little incentive for any country to reduce its own greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The gap between commitments under international environmental and human rights law on the one hand and political action on the other hand is therefore widening. In 2021, after a brief dip due to disruptions of human activity and energy use caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, global emissions rebounded sharply to 2019 levels. In the same year, global fossil-fuel emissions reached a record high of more than 35 gigatons CO2, moving the international community further away from the targets set out in the Paris Agreement on Climate Change adopted four years earlier. The ‘rights of all (…) people – and future generations – will be impacted’, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights warned. Political inaction amid climate urgencyĬlimate change poses ‘a human rights threat’ of a scope the ‘world has never seen’, Michelle Bachelet decried in 2019. ![]() Rather, a judgment that merits the status of a landmark ruling must go beyond such symbolism and establish a firm interpretative link between international law on climate change and human rights law. Whether a judgement on the merits by the ECtHR in the matter of ‘ KlimaSeniorinnen’ will count as a ‘success’ should therefore not solely be determined on the basis of the ‘message’ such a decision will convey. Ambitious policy pronouncements on how to mitigate climate change in the distant future are in no short supply. This reinforces the potential of the case to become a landmark ruling determining the Court’s approach to climate change. The Chamber to which the case had been allocated relinquished jurisdiction in favour of the Grand Chamber. Switzerland is the first case of climate change litigation before the ECtHR where all domestic remedies have been exhausted. Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and Others v. ![]()
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