Latest news with #GermanCivilCode
Straits Times
5 days ago
- Business
- Straits Times
Why a Peruvian farmer's court loss may be a win for climate justice
Peruvian farmer Saul Luciano Lliuya sued German energy giant RWE, claiming it should pay for 0.5 per cent of the flood defences. PHOTO: AFP A decade-long court battle between a Peruvian farmer and German energy giant RWE over the company's global emissions and its impact on his hometown finally came to an end on May 28. The court threw out the case without the possibility of appeal. Despite that, the farmer, his lawyers and environmentalists are hailing the ruling as an unprecedented victory for climate cases that could spur similar lawsuits. What was the case about? The highland Peruvian city of Huaraz is at risk from a glacial lake outburst flood as glacial melt has caused the volume of Lake Palcacocha to increase by at least 34 times since 1970, requiring investment in dams and drainage structures. Peruvian farmer Saul Luciano Lliuya sued German energy giant RWE, claiming it should pay for 0.5 per cent of the flood defences since the company emitted 0.5 per cent of global emissions since the industrial revolution despite not having a physical presence in Peru. The amount would have come out to about US$17,500 (S$22,560). Why did the court rule against the farmer? The court decision was based on calculating the risk Mr Lliuya's home faced from flooding. An expert opinion found that the 30-year damage risk to the plaintiff's house was 1 per cent. The court deemed this was not enough to take the case further. How does the court ruling make companies liable in similar lawsuits? While Mr Lliuya's house's risk did not pass the threshold, the court said that companies could be held liable for the impacts of their emissions. 'They really established a legal duty, a legal principle of corporate climate liability, which no court has ever done anywhere else in the world in a verdict like this,' Noah Walker-Crawford, a researcher at London School of Economics, Grantham Research Institute, said in a press conference after the verdict. 'So this is a really, really historic decision.' The court ruling stated that civil courts can rule on climate cases and that the German Civil Code overseeing property rights applies across borders and therefore, litigants around the world can file transnational cases against German companies. The court noted that RWE's permits do not exempt it from liability when infringing on the rights of others and the size of its global emissions meant it had a special responsibility for consequences due to climate change. It noted that being one of many emitters does not shield a company from liability. What did the court say about climate change? The court said the link between emissions and risks dates back to 1958, when US scientist Charles Keeling published a graph of the annual variation and accumulation of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the Earth's atmosphere. It added that the 1965 report by US President Lyndon B. Johnson's Science Advisory Committee that found burning fossil fuels increases atmospheric CO2 also gave companies enough information to foresee harmful consequences of emissions and bear legal responsibility for them. It added that there is a linear causation between emissions and climate change and the complexity of climate change science does not prevent liability. What does RWE say about the case? In a statement to Reuters, a spokesman for RWE said the ruling did not set a precedent as it is understood in the UK legal system, and it added three other regional courts have taken a different legal view. Since the case was thrown out, the court did not rule on whether and to what extent RWE could be held responsible, the statement said, adding that the company has operated in accordance with applicable laws and climate policy should be resolved at the political level. REUTERS Find out more about climate change and how it could affect you on the ST microsite here.
Scroll.in
6 days ago
- Business
- Scroll.in
Court rejects Peruvian farmer's case against German firm – but opens new door for climate justice
While a German court ruled for the first time on Wednesday that major carbon emitters could be held accountable for the damage they have caused, it dismissed the claim by a Peruvian farmer that a flood risk to his home in the mountains of Huaraz due to greenhouse gas emissions by a German power company should warrant compensation. Seeking to establish that polluters can be held liable for transboundary harm, the farmer and mountain guide Saul Luciano Lliuya had filed the case against the German power utility Rheinisch-Westfälisches Elektrizitätswerk. RWE is among the top three carbon dioxide emitters in the European Union power sector. The highly anticipated order by the higher regional court in Hamm, Germany acknowledged the climate dimensions of the case and the inequality between the Global North and South and the fact that Lliuya could not prevent the threat to his community as caused by other actors, said senior attorney with Centre for International Environmental Law Sebastien Duyck. Climate accountability Despite the appeal being dismissed, lawyers and activists declared that the case sets a groundbreaking precedent that could have implications for over 40 ongoing climate damages cases worldwide as well as future cases. They said it would herald an era of climate accountability. The judgement 'shatters the wall of impunity for major polluters', said Duyck of the Centre for International Environmental Law. 'For too long, these heavy emitters have been able to harm our environment with no regard to the consequences,' he said. 'That time is over'. In the summary order, Judge Rolf Meyer stated that the plaintiff might have a claim against the defendant under Section 1004 of the German Civil Code, which relates to the neighbourhood clause. This clause deals with protection against interference in property. While the section is usually applied in cases of neighbourly dispute, the court examined if climate change with its transboundary implications had brought about a global neighbourhood relationship, even if Huaraz and RWE's headquarters in Essen are separated by over 10,000 km The court ruled that if there is a threat of adverse effects, the polluter may be obligated to take preventive measures. If the polluter definitively refuses to do so, it could be determined, even before actual costs are incurred, that the polluter must bear the costs in proportion to their share of the emissions. While the 'great distance' between RWE's power plants and Lliuya's home in Peru alone was not sufficient reason to declare the lawsuit unfounded, the court noted the inaccuracy of one of the defendant's arguments. Lliuya said that Palcacocha, a glacial lake upstream from Huaraz, had been growing in size since 1970. He feared that it would burst due to melting ice and flood the city of more than 50,000. The court dismissed his appeal because the evidence showed that there was no concrete danger to his property. 📣 ⚖️ Historic legal precedent in Germany: major polluters can be held liable for climate damage. After a decade-long battle, Peruvian farmer Saúl Luciano Lliuya's case against energy giant RWE has opened the door to corporate climate accountability. 🧵 1/3 — Opportunity Green (@opp_green) May 28, 2025 The probability that any water from a glacial lake would reach the plaintiff's house within the next 30 years was only about 1%. Even if such an event occurred, the damage to Lliuya's house would be negligible, the court held. It rejected Lliuya's objections to the court expert's method of risk assessment that was based on a specific risk analysis based on local conditions and did not factor in wider climate change impacts. A rockslide Lliuya filed the case against RWE, in 2015, in Essen, the RWE headquarters with the help of the non Germanwatch after witnessing changes in the glacial lake. He demanded that the RWE compensate him for adaptation measures to ensure that the lake does not overflow and destroy his community. After the case was dismissed, an appeal was filed at the higher regional court in Hamm in 2017. The hearing for the case was completed on March 19. In an online briefing, speaking from Huaraz, Lliuya said he was satisfied with the verdict and he had achieved what he wanted to – to establish a precedent to link climate change and carbon emitters. But, he said it was a pity that RWE was not held responsible, even though the court held that emitters of pollution were responsible in general. Another pity, he pointed out, was that a month ago, a rockslide 10 km from his home had left four people dead and damaged property. This aspect was taken into account by the court, he said. If such an incident were to occur near Huaraz, the damage would be much greater, he contended. While the Peruvian authorities have built dykes around the glacial lake and installed early warning systems and were monitoring its levels, the responsibility for preventing disaster due to climate change did not fall on the countries in the Global South alone, said Noah Walker-Crawford, research fellow, London School of Economic Grantham Institute, who was in Hamm. The order established the legal precedent that major emitters could be held liable under German civil law for climate damages. 'The verdict was an important tool for communities that companies bear the responsibility for climate harm,' he said. The final verdict was to be delivered on April 14 but was postponed due to an application for bias filed by Lliuya's lawyer relating to the expert in the court case. Lliuya's lawyer, Roda Verheyen, added: ' It is true that the court itself did not consider the flood risk for my client to be sufficiently high. But one thing is clear: today's ruling is a milestone and will give a tailwind to climate lawsuits against fossil fuel companies, and thus to the move away from fossil fuels worldwide.' Lliuya's decade-long case would be a massive precedent that could be transposed elsewhere – for instance in the dozen cases against oil companies in the US and also in the case of the farmers from Indonesia who have filed a case against a cement company for impacts on agriculture, said Walker-Crawford. RWE said in a statement, 'The court has ruled that the lawsuit against RWE was unfounded. The attempt to set a legal precedent here has thus failed in the second instance. We also believe that it is fundamentally wrong to shift climate policy demands to the courtroom via NGOs. If this sets a precedent, every German industrial company would soon be faced with long-running climate lawsuits. This would cause massive damage to our industrial base.' It added: 'Climate policy issues must also be discussed and resolved at the political level.'
