Any ideas what do humans want now? Reversal in climate change, maybe! Earn a little more money to finance their flight or stay on Mars and beyond, maybe!
At times, it feels like humanity at large has worked towards eliminating every other specie from its competition. To live and die alone leaving this planet empty handed and desolate with its own progeny alone.
How does humankind ensure that other species do not survive?
Alongside many other minute yet significant impacts the humankind imprints on the planet, there are the following of these which are prominent:
- Pollution
- Destroying their healthy habitat
- Poaching them
- Trade and smuggling of their parts
- Expanding their own spaces and endangerment of forests
- Global warming
The world has largely awakened to the fact that humans had and continue to have an outstanding role in climate change but there is greater ignorance and negligence at the grass roots. It is to be understood that climate action can only be made successful if an individual human understands its due role in molding the planet’s future as well as their own.
At the same time in India, a survival fight for two of its highly endangered bird species i.e. the lesser florican and the Great Indian Bustard has expanded the meaning of human rights against climate change.
The Supreme Court judgement rendered in M K Ranjitsinh & Ors. v. Union of India & Ors. ruled in favor of the right of human to life, food, a healthy environment and freedom from adverse effects in a way that it has re-energized the war against climate change. It calls for a collective responsibility to arrest climate change and promote policies that foster human rights in consonance with the climate action.
This judgement has been sourced from a recent foreign judgement by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) that ruled in favor of a few elderly Swiss women. They stood against their government’s inadequate efforts for climate action. They claim the climate change to have exposed them to the risk of mortalities during heatwaves.
“The Swiss ruling sets a crucial legally binding precedent serving as a blueprint for how to successfully sue your own government over climate failures”, they exclaim.
With every part of the planet learning something new about their own tolerant levels of survival, a win for climate action is a win for everyone and therefore, for us too!
Recent Climate Victories & the Reason to Rejoice
Another climate victory in November 2023 by the environmental organization Greenpeace Nordic and youth group Natur og Ungdom took us by awe. It argued at the Norwegian court once again against the approvals of three new oil and gas fields spread across the fragile North Sea in Breidablikk, Yggdrasil and Tyrving.
Their representative explained: “As confirmed by the court’s decision, emissions from the oil fields would have catastrophic effects on the global climate, on people and the planet. We are pleased the oil and gas will remain untouched in the ground, instead of further exacerbating climate disasters.”
According to them, it violated the Norwegian Constitution, European Economic Area law and Norway’s international human rights commitments.
This has been done by not subjecting combustion emissions to an environmental impact assessment which is indispensable in any country and regional setting.
They accused the Ministry of Energy to have failed the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child for their irrespective acts of reckless approvals.
The Court has upheld that the children’s right to be heard could have been safeguarded through consistent public hearings in connection with lawfully required environmental impact assessments.
UNEP has also clarified the emergence of environmental awareness and justice. Environmental law has willfully found its place across 159 different countries who have strengthened the environmental law and incorporated those as the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment.
Meanwhile, even the foreign plaintiffs have entered environmental courts and tribunals in at least 67 countries, allowing local companies to be sued in case they disturbed the ecological balance abroad.
If climate advocacy finds a medium other than the United Nations, do we suggest international climate legitimacy failing somehow?
What about promoting the parallel movements of cases without jeopardising each other?
“I think the argument that the pursuit of this sort of litigation will undermine the UNFCCC process is a red herring. I think both are necessary to achieve the goals we need because no state alone can solve climate change”, explains an expert in the genre.
UNEP has also supported UNFCCC in its viewpoint, exclaiming: “It is too early to say multilateral diplomacy has failed but it is true that it is not succeeding fast enough”.
“A lot of climate litigation we have seen focuses on seeking to address government responses that are inadequate to meet the objectives of the Paris Agreement.”