A German court on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit over global warming filed nearly a decade ago by a Peruvian farmer against a German energy company, but supporters of the long-shot bid said the decision had opened a critical avenue for future climate lawsuits.
Although the Hamm Higher Regional Court ruled against the plaintiff, the presiding judge, Rolf Meyer, affirmed that German civil law could be used to hold companies accountable for the worldwide effects of their emissions.
“For the first time in history, a higher court in Europe has ruled that large emitters can be held responsible for the consequences of their greenhouse gas emissions,” said Roda Verheyen, a lawyer for the plaintiff, Saúl Luciano Lliuya. She called the ruling a milestone that “will give a tailwind to climate lawsuits against fossil fuel companies, and thus to the move away from fossil fuels worldwide.”
Mr. Luciano Lliuya, a farmer who also works as a tour guide, had argued that Huaraz, his city in the Andes, faced an existential risk of inundation from melting glaciers. He said that RWE, Germany’s largest energy utility, was partly responsible even though it has never operated in Peru.
The lawsuit alleged that RWE had contributed about .5 percent of the global emissions driving climate change and should therefore pay the same percentage of the costs of containing Lake Palcacocha, a glacial lake near Huaraz. It put that amount at $19,000.
The court sent a delegation to visit Lake Palcacocha in 2022 and conducted a two-day hearing with experts this year. But the court-appointed experts put the probability of flood risk specifically to Mr. Luciano Lliuya’s property at just 1 percent over the next 30 years.
Given that small chance, the judge said there was no reason to investigate any link to the company’s emissions. The ruling is final and cannot be appealed.
Still, Mr. Luciano Lliuya said after the verdict that he was proud that the case had “shifted the global conversation about what justice means in an era of the climate crisis.”
In response to the verdict, RWE said that the notion of civil climate liability “would have unforeseeable consequences for Germany as an industrial location, because ultimately claims could be asserted against any German company for damage caused by climate change anywhere in the world.” The company maintained that the lawsuit was outside the bounds of the German legal system and that it had operated in accordance with the law and detailed rules regarding emissions.
The company also pointed to its work in the field of renewables and said that it had reduced its carbon dioxide emissions by more than half since 2018, and that it expected to be carbon neutral by 2040.
The courts have become a central venue in the push for stronger action on climate change in recent years, with dozens of lawsuits targeting companies and governments around the world. Those include lawsuits against Shell in the Netherlands and one led by thousands of older Swiss women at the European Court of Human Rights, as well as lawsuits against energy companies filed by American state and local governments.
Joana Setzer, an associate professor at the Grantham Research Institute at the London School of Economics, said there were some 60 cases pending around the world aimed at holding companies liable for climate-related loss and damage.
“Today’s decision offers a powerful precedent to support those efforts, by confirming the legal foundation for corporate climate liability,” she said.
The environmental nonprofit group Germanwatch supported the lawsuit with public relations work, while a related foundation, Stiftung Zukunftsfähigkeit, covered the legal fees.
Sébastien Duyck, a senior attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law, which was not involved in the RWE litigation, said the ruling made it more likely “that those living at the sharp edge of climate change” will succeed in future cases.
But environmentalists have also been the target of recent lawsuits by companies, including in North Dakota, where a jury found Greenpeace liable for nearly $670 million over its role in protests against an oil pipeline. Greenpeace maintained that it had played only a minor role and that the suit was an attempt to silence critics of the pipeline company, Energy Transfer.
The two sides met before a judge on Tuesday, where Greenpeace argued the evidence presented at trial was insufficient to rule in Energy Transfer’s favor. The judge has not yet ruled on that point, or on a separate motion to reduce the size of the award to Energy Transfer.
Greenpeace has said it will appeal. The group is also counter-suing in the Netherlands.
Karen Zraick covers legal affairs for the Climate desk and the courtroom clashes playing out over climate and environmental policy.
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