BONN: Climate activists will argue in an Oslo court this week that Norway’s plans for Arctic oil exploration are unconstitutional, in an emerging branch of law where plaintiffs are trying to enlist a nation’s founding principles to limit warming.
The cases, including one in the United States where a group of young people are arguing that global warming threatens their Fifth Amendment right to life, liberty and property, are widening the scope of environmental litigation.
Some legal scholars say it is a stretch to invoke the Constitution rather than focus on taxes and regulations to control greenhouse gases. Governments including the US Trump administration and Norway are dismissive.
Still, some cases have succeeded, such as a 2015 case that told the Dutch government to cut greenhouse emissions.
And worldwide, 90 national constitutions have some sort of provisions guaranteeing environmental protection. Article 112 of Norway’s constitution speaks of safeguarding a healthy environment for future generations.
“We want the court to recognise that climate change is not some side issue but a fundamental core issue,” said Jennifer Morgan, executive director of Greenpeace whose lawyers will go to court in Oslo from Tuesday.
“The constitution represents those basic rights,” she said in Bonn, Germany, where almost 200 nations are working on ways to bolster the 2015 Paris climate agreement after President Donald Trump decided in June to pull out.
The Norwegian case, brought by Greenpeace and the Nature and Youth group, argues that a 2015 oil licensing round in the Arctic violates the constitution because Norway has agreed to the Paris accord’s goals to end the fossil fuel era this century.
Norway’s attorney general argues that the oil licences, awarded to Statoil, Chevron, Lukoil, ConocoPhillips and others, have no link to the Constitution. Norway’s environmental laws are among the toughest in the world.
The plaintiffs’ case is based on “a distinctly broad, political, and expanded interpretation of the Constitution’s article 112,” the Attorney General’s office said in court documents.
Environmentalists say the case is far more than a stunt. Losing could mean having to pay the state’s legal fees, meaning a total bill exceeding $500,000.
Worldwide, there are almost 900 lawsuits related to climate change in 25 nations, a UN study said in March.
Among them, a Peruvian farmer launched an appeal in Germany on Monday, arguing that greenhouse gas emissions by energy utility RWE are partly to the blame for melting an Andean glacier that is threatening to cause floods. —Reuters
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