The case is part of a lawsuit launched two years ago, and the hearing will begin on Thursday, a judicial source confirmed to CNN.
The lawsuit was launched by four NGOs, including Greenpeace France and Oxfam France, following an online petition that garnered 2.3 million signatures – the largest in French history, according to organizers.
Climate activists took to the streets near the administrative court in Paris on Thursday morning. The images provided by the NGOs showed a giant banner that read, “We are 2.3 million.”
The signatories hope that the court will “force the state to take all necessary measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions” in order to reach the 1.5 degree Celsius (2.7 degree Fahrenheit) target set by the Paris Agreement, the petition says. online.
The Paris Agreement, a pact signed in 2016 by almost every country in the world, aims to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) and continue efforts to limit it to 1.5 degrees Celsius ( 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).
Currently, the world will warm by 2.7 degrees Celsius (4.86 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century, according to Climate Action Tracker (CAT) – a non-profit analysis group that tracks government actions in the field of climate. This will bring more extreme storms, heat waves, higher sea level rise and, for many parts of the world, more severe and extreme droughts.
The French militants also want to acknowledge “the state’s climate inaction, ie France’s non-compliance with its commitments”.
“This government’s five-year greenhouse gas emissions have fallen at twice the rate of the law,” the NGOs said in a joint statement.
In a legal note seen by NGOs and the newspaper Le Monde in June last year, the French Ministry of the Environment denied that it had not complied with its legal obligations to combat climate change and called for the case to be rejected.
One of the arguments put forward by the government is that it cannot be considered “solely responsible” for climate change in France, according to quotes from a memorandum published by Le Monde.
“France represents about 1% of the world’s population and emits about 1% of the planet’s greenhouse gases each year,” he said.
“A substantial part of this pollution comes from industrial and agricultural activities”, but also from “individual choices and decisions that it is not always possible to influence”, the note continued.
CNN contacted the Ministry of Environment for comments.
A verdict in this case is expected within 15 days, the NGOs said in their statement.
Legal action on climate change has become a global phenomenon, according to a report published in July 2019. Until then, lawsuits have been launched against governments and corporate interests in 28 countries, according to a report by the Grantham Research Institute at London School. of Economics and Political Science.
The researchers found that while the US has been the global leader in climate change litigation, the prevalence of such processes has spread around the world.
Sandrine Amiel and Gaëlle Fournier reported from Paris, France. Jack Guy wrote from London.