A scrutiny of growing trend of Environmental Lawsuits

An organization with a strong carbon footprint can be pulled up. A global corporation too with incessant offshore drilling can be held accountable. But what does one do when governments turn a blind eye to global warming and other dire consequences of climate change? If the current growing trend is anything to go by, then environmental lawsuits against the government beckon!

Although a vast majority of climate lawsuits have been filed in the US, more and more countries have been sitting up and pointing a finger at their respective governments about what they have been doing (or not doing) to check rising average global temperatures and questioning the veracity of impact of the local policies. And the Norwegian lawsuit over Arctic oil exploration plans leads the pack.

Norway is essentially seen as a ‘green-climate role model’. It has pledged climate neutrality by 2030 and to completely phase out petrol/electric cars real soon. Therefore, when the government decided to open the quaint Barents Sea for oil exploration, environmentalists and green campaigners came snapping at their heels. The case the government has been slapped with may see the current Prime Minister, Erna Solberg, appear before a city court in violation of the Paris Climate Agreement.

There are big names at play here. Statoil, Chevron, and Aker BP have all bought blocks for oil exploration the sea. Ninety-three blocks to be exact.

Norwegian lawsuit is not a singular case. Surprisingly, Pakistan has a singular environmental lawsuit that caught the world’s eye. Asghar Leghari, owner of a 500-acre sugarcane farm in Pakistan’s south-west Punjab region was losing big chunks of his produce to weather adversities. What irked him, even more, was his government’s inability to look after its junta (a colloquial name for public used in the Indian subcontinent) in the face of such unpredictable calamities. So he did the one thing that he could do, drag the government to court. In 2015, Asghar filed a case with Lahore High Court stating that the government failed to save him from the adverse impacts of climate change. One would think that precious little would have come out of a commoner suing the government over something as innocuous as climate change in one of the most corrupt nations in the world, right? But you got that wrong. Following his lawsuit, the judge ordered the formation of the Climate Change Commission to push forward the policies that the government had promised. The commission, comprising of representatives from other ministries and corporate bigwigs from MNCs, has now started to meet regularly to tackle the crisis at hand.

Another case that the world is closely watching is Juliana Vs the United States. The most popular of all environmental lawsuits. An NGO called Our Children’s Trust has sued the government over its alleged violation of the 5^th Amendment, of life and liberty, by not adopting measures to curb Green House Gas emissions. Trump administration tried to strike down the case from the court but the judge did not let that happen. Hopefully, the case will come to a closure soon.

To all the cases mentioned here, plus all others that are taking shape, there seems to be a common thread running through them. Firstly, they all question the obligation of leaving a living, breathing planet for our future generations. Secondly, they question the very constitution that defines the DNA of a nation in question. And lastly, the constitution and the pressing obligations towards our future generations hold the government accountable for their actions in the larger scheme of things.

Is it enough to make an impact, one might ask? Policies written down in summits like the Paris Climate Agreement are more like guidelines for the governments to follow what they have pledged individually towards a greener planet. But they are not laws. They, at best, are watchdogs. However, what the climate agreement has done is given teeth to the people to question the functioning of the governments in favour of oil lobbyists. It has made the government more accountable. A seven-year-old girl in Pakistan is suing the government over its negligence to protect the nature and its people. A group of activists are holding protests through a climate lawsuit against a new airport coming up in Austria. The Netherlands is dealing with scores of its citizens up against the government in court over its lowering of Greenhouse gas reduction targets. Change is on the verge of happening, we’re transcending from the dark to a brighter morning.

Currently, the world is well on its way to breach the 2-degree Celsius global warming mark. And that’s already set the alarm bells ringing. Climate lawsuits, even if they are not an iron-cast method to avert a climate crisis, are an effective brake to slow down the process. Even stop it in some instances. It shows the undeniable capacity of the people to question what is wrong, demand what is right and to shoot down what is not in the interest of climate change.