Switzerland may be famous for its neutrality, but it’s no longer climate-neutral. In April, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in favour of a group of 2,400 older Swiss women who argued that the government was putting them at greater risk of dying during heat waves by not doing enough to combat climate change. Nine years after they began their battle, the women made legal history, winning the first ever climate case in an international court.
The applicants – KlimaSeniorinnen, or Senior Women for Climate Protection, average age 73 – claimed that their government “failed to fulfil its positive obligations to protect life effectively” through appropriate legislation and targets to combat climate change. The court agreed, accepting the women’s contention that older women suffer disproportionately from intensifying heat waves.
Heat-related deaths have spiked by roughly 30% in Europe over the last two decades. A 2023 study published in Nature Medicine estimated 56% more heat-related deaths in European women than men. The judging panel declared 16 to 1 that Article 2 of Europe’s human rights convention guarantees citizens “effective protection by state authorities from the serious adverse effects of climate change on their lives, health, well-being and quality of life.”
What we do now, we are not doing for ourselves, but for the sake of our children and our children’s children.
- Elisabeth Stern, KlimaSeniorinnen member
The Swiss women’s group, formed in 2016 with the support of Greenpeace, faced an uphill battle. After their case was dismissed by the Swiss Supreme Court in 2020, they turned to the European Court of Human Rights. “We know statistically that in 10 years we will be gone,” KlimaSeniorinnen member Elisabeth Stern told BBC. “What we do now, we are not doing for ourselves, but for the sake of our children and our children’s children.”
Scientists say Switzerland is heating up at twice the global rate. Heat domes last fall set new temperature records. Of course, it’s not just Switzerland. The 2023 Lancet Countdown report on health and climate change estimated that global heat deaths could quadruple by mid-century if the world warms by 2°C.
Given the court’s ruling, Switzerland will need to review and upgrade its climate policies. While the decision is not technically binding beyond Switzerland, it sets legal precedent for future climate legislation in all 46 countries that have signed the European Convention on Human Rights.
Andrew Gage, an environmental lawyer with Vancouver-based West Coast Environmental Law, believes the KlimaSeniorinnen decision will influence the outcome of cases beyond Europe – including in Canada, where the Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects individuals’ rights to life and security. “While not binding,” he says, the decision sets “a very strong precedent.”
