Hanna Aho, a climate expert at the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation (SLL), posed for a photo at a news conference in Helsinki on Thursday, 22 August 2024. SLL, along with a number of other environmental and human rights organisations, announced they have sued the Finnish government over its failure to respond sufficiently to the climate crisis. (Heikki Saukkomaa – Lehtikuva)
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THE GOVERNMENT of Prime Minister Petteri Orpo (NCP) has been hit with a lawsuit over its insufficient measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and foster carbon sinks, reports YLE.
A group of environmental and human rights organisations argue in the suit that the government is violating the climate act because it is on track to fall short of both the carbon-neutrality target for 2035 and climate obligations imposed by the European Union.
The target and obligations are both enshrined in the climate act that was amended into its current form in July 2022.
Climate and environmental experts have long sounded the alarm that the country is on pace to fall short of its climate targets without significant additional measures. Minister of Climate and the Environment Kai Mykkänen (NCP) admitted as much at the release event of the annual climate report in June. Also the government programme acknowledges that the carbon sink of forests will fall short of the level required by the EU in 2021–2025.
The Finnish Climate Change Panel argued in a report published last week that the government’s policy decisions will steer the country off track on transport emissions, violating a pledge made to the 27-country union.
Amnesty, Greenpeace, Climate Parents Finland, Finnish Sámi Youth, the Finnish Nature Association and the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation (SLL) argued in announcing their lawsuit that the government inaction not only inhibits the realisation of six provisions in the climate act, but also infringes on basic and human rights.
“We’re demanding that the government take sufficient action to reach its climate goals without delay,” Hanna Aho, a climate expert at SLL, was quoted saying at a news conference on Thursday by YLE.
The measures laid out by the government, she added, reflect neither the obligations enshrined in the climate act nor the urgency of the climate crisis.
The national effort to achieve carbon neutrality and other climate targets has become undone largely by the erosion of forests’ ability to sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, a development that has been attributed to intensive logging and the age structure of forests.
The latest data indicate that the land use sector turned from a carbon sink into a , the Swiss government is expected to make its decision on the matter by the end of the month.
“The ECHR ruling confirms the legal nexus between climate change and human rights,” Kaisa Kosonen, a climate expert at Greenpeace, said on Thursday.
“Failing to take climate action is probably the largest intergenerational human rights violation in the world’s history,” echoed Elina Mikola, an expert in climate and environmental issues at Amnesty Finland.
Litigation has yielded wins for the climate also elsewhere. In Montana, the US, a district court ruled last year that a state law that had prohibited permit authorities from considering carbon dioxide emissions in weighing up, for example, fossil fuel projects is unconstitutional as it violates the constitutional right to a “clean and healthful” environment.
An appeal against the ruling is presently pending.
Aleksi Teivainen – HT
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Source: www.helsinkitimes.fi
