Europe

France taken to court over 'climate inaction' in landmark case

January 14, 2021. Summarized by summa-bot.

Compression ratio: 46%. 1 min read.

A court in Paris will hear a landmark case accusing the French government of taking inadequate action to combat climate change.

Paris (CNN)A court in Paris will hear a landmark case accusing the French government of taking inadequate action to combat climate change.

"Great day for #climate justice," tweeted Greenpeace France, one of the plaintiffs in the case.

The lawsuit was launched by four NGOs, including Greenpeace France and Oxfam France, following an online petition that gathered 2. 3 million signatures -- the largest in French history, according to the organizers.

Currently, the world is set to warm by 2. 7 degrees Celsius (4. 86 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century, according to the Climate Action Tracker (CAT) -- a non-profit analysis group which tracks government climate action.

In a legal memo seen by the NGOs and Le Monde newspaper in June last year, the French Environment Ministry denied that it failed to comply with its legal obligations to fight climate change and asked for the case to be dismissed.

One of the arguments invoked by the government is that it cannot be held "solely responsible" for climate change in France, according to quotes of the memo published by Le Monde.

Legal action on climate change has become a global phenomenon, according to a report published July 2019.

By that date, lawsuits had been launched against governments and corporate interests in 28 countries, according to a report from the Grantham Research Institute at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Researchers found that, while the US was the global leader in terms of climate change litigation, the prevalence of such lawsuits had spread worldwide.

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