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The German Constitutional Court ruled last week that 2019’s Federal Climate Change Act violates the fundamental rights of Germany’s youth population by “irreversibly offload[ing] major emission reduction burdens onto periods after 2030,” thereby saddling the young with responsibility for older generations’ emissions and environmental inaction.
The Act requires Germany to reduce its emissions 55% below 1990 levels by 2030. That’s a strong target compared to most national emission reduction plans, but the Constitutional Court found the lack of specificity regarding emission-reduction plans for 2031 onward incompatible with young citizens’ rights as enshrined in Germany’s constitutional Basic Law.
As noted in the court’s English-language press release regarding the decision, to achieve the Paris Agreement’s overarching target of limiting temperature rise to 2°C, or 1.5°C if possible, “the reductions still necessary after 2030 will have to be achieved with ever greater speed and urgency...the reduction pathway for greenhouse gas emissions from 2031 onwards are not sufficient to ensure that the necessary transition to climate neutrality is achieved in time.”
The Constitutional Court’s decision marks the third time European courts have ruled against government efforts to effectively put off major emission reductions. The Dutch Urgenda and Irish Friends of the Irish Environment cases both featured similar arguments and outcomes, albeit with respective courts deciding those cases on different legal grounds. Climate activists in France also won a recent case in which they sued the French government for not living up to its commitments under the Paris Agreement.
Though the legal reasoning varies in climate litigation victories from Europe, South America, and Asia, such victories’ increasing frequency suggests judges around the world are becoming more comfortable in this legal frontier.
(There does not appear to be an official English translation of the German decision, but a Safari-translated English version has been uploaded for convenience here.)