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Local Germany
4 days ago
- Business
- Local Germany
German court sets climate precedent but rejects Peruvian farmer's claim
The judge in the case ruled that companies "may be obligated to take preventive measures" to counter their emissions, according to a statement from the higher regional court in Hamm. "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," the court concluded. The ruling supported arguments made by Saul Luciano Lliuya, who claimed that RWE, a global energy company headquartered in Germany, should pay towards the cost of protecting his hometown of Huaraz from a glacial lake swollen by melting snow and ice. RWE has never operated in Peru, but the 44-year-old farmer argued that, as one of the world's top emitters of carbon dioxide, the firm was partly responsible for the flood risk. The court, however, rejected Lliuya's claim against RWE, saying there was "no concrete danger to his property" from a potential flood. Lliuya, who did not attend the presentation of the verdict in person, said in a statement he was "disappointed" the court had not overall ruled in his favour. Saul Luciano Lliuya poses for a picture at his home in Llupa, Ancash department, Peru on May 28, 2025. (Photo by Jimmy Frank Adán Ramírez / AFP) But speaking to journalists in a video call from his hometown, the farmer said he was "very happy with the precedent" set by the ruling. Lliuya's lawyer Roda Verheyen said the court's reasoning showed "that large emitters can be held responsible for the consequences of their greenhouse gas emissions". The outcome of the case would "give a tailwind to climate lawsuits against fossil fuel companies, and thus to the move away from fossil fuels worldwide", she said. Advertisement 10-year legal fight RWE said in a statement it had "always considered such civil 'climate liability' to be inadmissible under German law". Establishing such a liability could make it hard to do business in Germany, "because it could ultimately allow for claims for climate-related damages being asserted against every German company anywhere in the world", it said. RWE had "always operated its plants in compliance with applicable law", it said. "It would be an irreconcilable contradiction if the state permitted CO2 emissions, regulated them in detail and in some instances even required them, but at the same time retroactively imposed civil liability for them." Lliuya first filed a lawsuit in 2015 at a court in the western city of Essen, where RWE has its headquarters, demanding 17,000 euros ($18,400) towards flood defences for his community. The Essen court dismissed the case, but in 2017 the higher district court in nearby Hamm allowed an appeal. Lliuya based his claim on a study that concluded that RWE, which today uses a variety of power sources including wind, coal and gas, has been responsible for 0.38 percent of all global carbon emissions since the start of the industrial era. Advertisement In Wednesday's ruling, however, the court said the chances of Lliuya's home being flooded in the next 30 years was "only about one percent" and that high waters would "not be able to endanger the structure of the house". The court in Hamm said the ruling was not open to appeal. Despite going no further, the verdict in the farmer's case "adds strength to a growing field of climate litigation", said Joana Setzer of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science. "Over 60 cases around the world are currently seeking to hold companies liable for climate-related losses and damages," Setzer said. The decision by the court in Hamm would "a powerful precedent to support those efforts", she said.
Straits Times
4 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.
The Star
5 days ago
- Business
- The Star
German court to rule on Peruvian farmer versus RWE climate case
Peruvian farmer Saul Luciano Lliuya, who is suing German energy utility RWE, arguing that the company's emissions have contributed to the melting of Andean glaciers, poses for a photo in front of Lake Palcacocha, before the verdict of the high regional German court in Hamm, in Huaraz, Peru May 27, 2025. REUTERS/Angela Ponce (Reuters) -A German court is due to decide on Wednesday whether a lawsuit brought by a Peruvian farmer against German energy giant RWE can continue, in a landmark case that is setting a precedent for future climate change litigation. In a case that began a decade ago, farmer Saul Luciano Lliuya argues that RWE's emissions have contributed to the melting of Andean glaciers, increasing the flood risk to his home. Using data from the Carbon Majors database, which tracks historic emissions from major fossil fuel producers, Lliuya says RWE is responsible for nearly 0.5% of global man-made emissions since the industrial revolution and must pay a proportional share of the costs needed to adapt to climate change. For a $3.5 million flood defence project needed in his region, RWE's share would be around $17,500, according to Lliuya's calculations. The 44-year-old farmer, whose family grows corn, wheat, barley and potatoes in a hilly region outside Huaraz, says he has chosen to sue RWE because it is one of the biggest polluters in Europe - rather than any particular company projects near his home. RWE, which is phasing out its coal-fired power plants, says a single emitter of carbon dioxide cannot be held responsible for global warming. In two days of hearing in March, the Higher Regional Court of Hamm examined a 200-page report by experts it had appointed to determine whether melting glaciers were raising the water levels in Lake Palcacocha and posing a direct risk to Lliuya's home in Huaraz over the next three decades. Lliuya's lawyer Roda Verheyen in March raised concerns about the assessment of risks by the court experts, who found a 3% flood risk, and said she was ready to challenge their findings. The verdict was originally due in April, but the court had to postpone it because Verheyen filed a motion to disqualify one of the court's experts. Verheyen said the arguments were clear. "In my view, we cannot lose," she told a media briefing last Thursday. The amount that industrialised countries should contribute to mitigating the effects of global warming, including rising sea levels, extreme storms and heatwaves, has been fiercely debated at successive U.N. climate summits. If the court on Wednesday finds a specific flooding risk to Lliuya's home, it will then examine the impact of climate change and greenhouse gas emissions on Andean glaciers melting and increasing the risk. Whatever the outcome on Wednesday, climate academics said the case was a game-changer as the court's legal reasoning would be used by future cases. "Even if the case is dismissed, we expect to get this legal precedent, which would be a massive step forward," Noah Walker-Crawford, a researcher at London School of Economics Grantham Research Institute, said. ($1 = 0.8809 euros) (Reporting by Riham Alkousaa; editing by Barbara Lewis)
Scroll.in
5 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.'
DW
5 days ago
- Business
- DW
German court rejects climate case against energy giant RWE – DW – 05/28/2025
Judges have dismissed a climate case brought by a Peruvian farmer against RWE seeking damages from the German utility for endangering his home due to melting glaciers. In a decision that has been ten years in the making, judges in the western German city of Hamm have thrown out the case of a Peruvian farmer seeking damages from energy giant RWE for the risk of flooding connected to melting glaciers. Delivering its verdict in the David versus Goliath case, judges said the damage to Saul Luciano Lluiya's property from a potential glacier flood was not high enough. They ruled out an appeal. But in a legal first, the court did rule that companies can be held liable for the impacts of their emissions. Lluiya's lawyer Roda Verheyen said that although the court had not recognised the risk to her client's home, the verdict was a "milestone" that would "give a tailwind to climate lawsuits against fossil fuel companies." "For the first time in history, a high court in Europe has ruled that large emitters can be held responsible for the consequences of their greenhouse gas emissions," she added. The environmental NGO Germanwatch, which has supported the plaintiff throughout the long legal proceedings, said the ruling marked "a great success." "The court's decision, which at first glance sounds like a defeat due to the dismissal of the case, is actually a historic landmark ruling that can be invoked by those affected in many places around the world," the nonprofit said in a statement. "This is because there are very similar legal requirements in numerous other countries, such as the UK, the Netherlands, the USA and Japan." A long road of litigation It is almost a decade since Saul Luciano Lluiya first filed a lawsuit against German energy giant RWE, calling on the company to pay its fair share to protect his home in Peru. Lliuya's town of Huaraz is located in the west of the country, in a valley below the Palcacocha mountain lake. As greenhouse gas emissions have caused global temperatures to rise, glaciers in the region have been melting. Water in the lake above Lluiya's home has increased more than fourfold since 2003 alone, leading experts to warn of an increased risk of flooding, with potentially dire consequences for the region. They say if large blocks of ice were to break off the glacier and fall into the lake, it could trigger meter-high flooding in lower-lying urban areas. As the air temperatures increase due to the burning of fossil fuels, the lake near Lliuya's home fills with water from a melting glacier, increasing the risk of overflowing and causing flooding Image: Alexander Luna/Germanwatch e.V. Lliuya has been suing RWE under a German neighborhood law, which works to protect residents from disturbances resulting from the actions of their neighbors — for example, from tree roots causing damage from an adjacent property. His initial lawsuit was rejected in 2015 by a court in Essen, the western German city where the energy company is headquartered. But in 2017, a higher court in the nearby city of Hamm granted an appeal. In March this year, judges at that court heard evidence over whether Lliuya's house was really in jeopardy and whether RWE can be held responsible. "I feel a great responsibility," Lliuya said ahead of this year's hearings. For him, the case is about fighting climate change and the melting of glaciers and "holding those who have caused the damage to account." The Peruvian farmer was calling on RWE to cover a pro rata percentage of the estimated costs to build flood defenses to protect the village from the rising lake water. This would equate to around €17,000 ($19,000). RWE, which is not active in Peru, says it has always complied with national legal regulations and has repeatedly questioned why it has been singled out. In a statement to DW earlier this year, the multinational said "if there were such a claim under German law, every car driver could also be held liable. We consider this to be legally inadmissible and the wrong approach from a socio-political point of view." Corporate responsibility for global emissions? As an energy powerhouse with a history of largely using coal to generate electricity, RWE is one of Europe's biggest polluters. A 2023 analysis found the company to be responsible for just under 0.4% of global emissions — more than twice that of Greece. In ruling the case as admissible in an earlier hearing, experts saw the court as effectively recognizing the transboundary effects of climate change — even if the damage occurs thousands of kilometers away. "Some of the arguments made in the case are of course transferable, even if not directly applicable in any other jurisdiction," said Petra Minnerop, a professor of international law at Durham University. "And this is what we see in litigation generally that litigants have tried to transfer the arguments and also learn from the court outcomes and then provided improved evidence and the adjusted legal argument," she added. Peruvian farmer Saul Luciano Lliuya took German energy giant, RWE, to court over rising temperatures that are increasing the risk of flooding from the glacier lake near his home Image: Alexander Luna/Germanwatch e.V. Could it still set a precedent? Speaking ahead of Wednesday's decision. Noah Walker-Crawford, a research fellow at the London-based Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, said the case set an important precedent, adding that there were likely to be "repercussions around the world." Since the proceedings began, Walker-Crawford says around 40 cases have sprung up challenging big companies over their responsibility for climate change in countries such as Belgium, Indonesia and the United States. "There has been insufficient political progress on climate change over the past decades, especially at an international level and especially in terms of loss and damage, in terms of the devastating impacts that communities are facing around the world and that's why we're seeing more and more that communities are turning to the courts, really out of desperation," Walker-Crawford explained. Sébastien Duyck, senior attorney with the Center for Environmental Law (CEIL) said the judgement shatters the "wall of impunity for major polluters." He added that "this precedent provides a legal spark to accelerate the pursuit of climate justice. The recognition that a company can, in principle, be held accountable in court for climate harms halfway across the planet will buttress the arguments presented in dozens of pending cases as well as embolden impacted communities to seek justice through the courts." Edited by: Tamsin Walker
