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CLIMATE CRISIS

Who are Switzerland’s victorious climate ‘Elders’?

The Swiss women's association Elders for Climate Protection secured a historic win Tuesday when Europe's top rights court faulted Switzerland for not doing enough to tackle global warming.

Published: 10 April 2024 09:06 CEST
Who are Switzerland's victorious climate 'Elders'?
Members of the Swiss association after the court ruling. Photo by Frederick FLORIN / AFP

Here are some facts about the group of Swiss seniors who helped secure the European Court of Human Rights’ first-ever condemnation of a country for failing to take action against climate change.

Over 64 

In August 2016 a small group of women above retirement age who had bonded over concerns about climate change created the association to demand stronger action towards reaching the goals set by the 2015 Paris Agreement.

That agreement set targets for governments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, with the aim of preferably limiting warming to below global temperature rises to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

“If everyone acted as Switzerland is doing today, global warming of up to three degrees Celsius could occur by 2100,” the Elders for Climate Protection say on their website.

“Keeping it below 1.5 degrees is decisive to avert more serious threats to human rights.”

Today, the association says it counts more than 2,500 members — all women over the age of 64 who live in Switzerland.

Their average age is 73, it said.

“Elderly women are extremely vulnerable to the effects of heat,” the association said, explaining its membership criteria.

It does not meanwhile place the same restrictions on its some 1,200 supporters.

Long journey 

The organisation has been arguing for climate protection to be recognised as a human right, pointing out that the increasingly frequent and intense heatwaves it is causing “pose a real and serious risk to our lives and physical and mental health”.

But the lawsuits it brought in Switzerland were all thrown out.

After failing to get a hearing before Switzerland’s Supreme Court, the Elders for Climate Protection filed an appeal in 2020 with the European Court of Human Rights.

That court finally issued its verdict Tuesday, finding that the Swiss state had violated Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees the “right to respect for private and family life”.

The lawyer of the Swiss association, Cordelia Bahr, said the court had “established that climate protection was a human right”.

“It’s a huge victory for us and a legal precedent for all the states of the Council of Europe,” she said.

A librarian and a counsellor 

The association counts two co-presidents.

Anne Mahrer, a librarian from Geneva, has always been involved in environmental protection, first as part of the anti-nuclear movement in the 1970s, according to an annual listing of notable Swiss citizens published by the Illustré weekly.

She later got into politics, becoming a parliamentarian for the Green Party.

At her side is Rosmarie Wydler-Walti, who worked as an education and marriage counsellor in Basel.

As a young mother, she got involved in the environmental protection and feminist movements.

In a profile published by the Organisation of the Swiss Abroad, she said she felt moved to act after the “traumatising” Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986 and by a fire in a warehouse storing chemicals near Basel the same year.

Greenpeace support 

The Elders for Climate Protection has since the start enjoyed strong support from the Swiss chapter of Greenpeace, which among other things has stood as guarantor for its years of legal fees.

Since its creation in 2016, the association has raked up more than 122,000 francs in expenses, according to its website.

Tuesday’s verdict “is obviously a huge relief for the people who have been working on this case for years,” Greenpeace spokesman Mathias Schlegel told the Le Temps daily.

“It is a very emotional moment. I have even seen some of my colleagues in tears,” he said.

Greenpeace and the Elders for Climate Protection now plan to take their case to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, with hearings expected to begin early next year.

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CLIMATE CRISIS

Will anything change in Switzerland after European Court’s climate ruling?

In a landmark decision, Europe's top rights court ruled that Switzerland was not doing enough to tackle climate change, condemning the country to pay a hefty fine. But will anything change?

Published: 9 April 2024 18:08 CEST
Will anything change in Switzerland after European Court's climate ruling?

The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg (ECHR)  issued its decision on Tuesday after a Swiss association of Elders for Climate Protection — 2,500 women aged 73 on average — argued that the country’s government was not doing enough to mitigate the effects of global warming. 

The ECHR ruled that Switzerland had violated Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees the “right to respect for private and family life,” and ordered the government to pay the complainants a fine of 80,000 euros (78,555 francs), according to AFP.

Is Switzerland really lagging in implementing climate protection measures, as the court ruled?

It depends on who you ask.

According to the Federal Office for the Environment, the country “pursues an active policy on reducing greenhouse gases and making its contribution to the international goal of limiting global warming to two degrees.”

But environmental activists — including the group which brought the case to the European Court — disagree, arguing that “Switzerland is doing too little to protect its population from the consequences of the climate crisis,” Greenpeace pointed out.

If it is true that Swiss authorities are dragging their feet in implementing pro-active climate protection measures, it may not be entirely their fault.

If anyone/anything is to blame, at least partly, it is the system of direct democracy.

Here is just one example:

In September 2020, the Swiss parliament passed the so-called CO2 Act, aiming to achieve the objectives of the Paris Climate Agreement by halving Switzerland’s CO2 emissions by 2030 compared to 1990.

Its ultimate goal was to no longer emit any greenhouse gases by 2050 — the so-called ‘net zero target’

However, in a referendum held on June 13th, 2021, Swiss voters narrowly rejected this measure which, according to the then Environment Minister Simonetta Sommaruga, meant that “it will now be difficult to achieve the climate targets.”
 

So will it change anything?

It will be up to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe to supervise the measures Switzerland will have to take to remedy this ‘shortcoming.’

The Swiss government said it would examine measures it should take following the ruling.

Alain Chablais, the lawyer who represented Switzerland in court, warned it might take “some time”.

Anne Mahrer, a member of Elders for Climate Protection, said the association would be “watching very closely” to make sure the government complied.

But Joie Chowdhury, a lawyer from the Center for International Environmental Law, said the ruling was “historic”.

“We expect this ruling to influence climate action and climate litigation across Europe and far beyond,” she said.

It “leaves no doubt: the climate crisis is a human rights crisis, and states have human rights obligations to act urgently and effectively… to prevent further devastation and harm to people and the environment,” she said.

But among certain Swiss MPs there reaction was different.

Switzerland’s biggest political party demanded a withdrawal from the Council of Europe after the decision.

The hard-right Swiss People’s Party (SVP) slammed the verdict, calling the decision by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg “scandalous”.

“Switzerland must withdraw from the Council of Europe,” the SVP said in a statement, adding that the court’s job was to “dispense justice and not make policy”.

They “did not even consider the fact that Switzerland is exemplary in reducing carbon dioxide emissions”, the SVP said, adding: “Switzerland has had almost CO2-neutral energy production in the past with hydropower and nuclear power.”

The SVP’s Jean-Luc Addor questioned the court’s this judgment, as well as the fact that foreign judges have ruled on Swiss matters.

“What is the legitimacy of the ECHR to pronounce such a ‘condemnation’? Is it now going to send the European army to Switzerland?,” he said.

If anything is to happen then, various federal departments— including the Justice Ministry and the Federal Department of the Environment — will have to step in, as well as cantons and MPs. 

In Switzerland the will to counteract climate change is there, at all levels of the government and population at large.

However, unlike many other countries, elected officials in Switzerland can only do so much to get new laws implemented.

That’s because any measures hatched in the parliament could eventually be rejected when voters have their say at the ballot box.

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