A group of older Swiss women have won the first ever climate case victory in the European Court of Human Rights.
The women, mostly in their 70s, said that their age and gender made them particularly vulnerable to the effects of heatwaves linked to climate change. The court said Switzerland's efforts to meet its emission reduction targets had been woefully inadequate.
It is the first time the powerful court has ruled on global warming. The ruling is binding and can trickle down to influence the law in 46 countries in Europe including the UK.
The Swiss women, called KlimaSeniorinnen or Senior Women for Climate Protection, argued that they cannot leave their homes and suffer health attacks during heatwaves in Switzerland. On Tuesday data showed that last month was the world's warmest March on record, meaning the temperature records have broken ten months in a row.
The court dismissed two other cases brought by six Portuguese young people and a former French mayor. Both argued that European governments had failed to tackle climate change quickly enough, violating their rights.
Member of the KlimaSeniorinnen Elisabeth Smart, 76, told BBC News that she has seen how the climate in Switzerland has changed since she was a child growing up on a farm.
‘Not made to sit in a rocking chair and knit'
Asked about her commitment to the case for nine years, she said: “Some of us are just made that way. We are not made to sit in a rocking chair and knit.” Governments globally have signed up to drastically reduce their greenhouse gas emissions – the gases that warm Earth's atmosphere when we burn fossil fuels like oil, coal and gas.
But scientists and activists say that progress is too slow and the world is not on track to meet the crucial target of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5C.
This ruling means the European Court of Human Rights agrees that Switzerland has been too slow to reduce its emissions, finding that there were “critical gaps” in its policies.
