The Use of Articles 2 and 8 ECHR in Climate Change Litigation in the Aftermath of the Urgenda Ruling

Abstract

The present paper focuses on the emerging human rights-based climate change litigation legal movement and proposes an ECHR law-based litigation route that can be used, along with European and national constitutional law arguments, in national courts of states that participate in the ECHR system, in order to legally oblige governments to effectively reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions. Starting from the first major successful climate change litigation case, Urgenda, where the claimants managed to convince the Dutch courts (including the Supreme Court) that excessive greenhouse gas emissions are capable of jeopardizing citizens’ right to life and right to private and family life, this paper aims to contribute to the success of climate change litigation throughout Europe, by providing a legal strategy that mainly draws inspiration from the Urgenda case and indicates how climate change litigation claims can be brought before the national courts of every state that forms part of the ECHR system. By analyzing how Urgenda utilized the Strasbourg court case-law on Articles 2 and 8 ECHR in order to bring climate cases under their protective scope, the actual significance of the ECHR law in climate change litigation will be defined, along with the added value that the Urgenda ruling and its line of reasoning offers to prospective climate change litigants in state-parties of the ECHR system. At the same time, the transferability possibilities of the Urgenda claim will be presented. Lastly, the perspectives of climate litigation in Greece will be discussed, by indicating a specific legal route that Greek NGOs could follow in order to oblige the state to adopt a more ambitious climate policy.