PARIS: Ten families from Europe, Kenya, and Fiji have filed suit against the European Union, seeking to limit global warming’s threats to their homes and livelihoods, their lawyers said on Thursday. They insist the bloc must do more to limit climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions, and point to drought, glacier melt, sea level rise and flooding that will only worsen as temperatures rise.

The plaintiffs before the EU’s top court, the European Court of Justice are “families living near the coast, families owning forests in Portugal, families in the mountains that see the glaciers melting, families in the north that are affected by permafrost melting”, said their lawyer Roda Verheyen. They “are already being impacted by climate change, already incurring damage ... and they are saying: ‘EU, you have to do what you can to protect us because otherwise our damage will be catastrophical’,” Verheyen said.

The claim, nicknamed the “People’s Climate Case”, is the first of its kind brought against the EU, the group’s lawyers said. Previously, suits were filed against individual governments. The EU has pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. This goal is inadequate to protect the plaintiffs “fundamental rights such as the right to life, health, property, and occupation,” said the Climate Action Network (CAN) lobby group backing the court bid.

Petru Vlad, a 50-year-old father of three who farms 100 sheep and a dozen cows in the mountains of central Romania, complains about dwindling water supplies due to changing rainfall patterns. “There is no more water,” he said.

And the vegetation his herd feeds on has also changed. “Now there is only grass with tough roots better able to survive the drought,” he said.

“Through this case, I am not seeking to be compensated, but mainly to alert the authorities in the EU of the situation,” added Armando Carvalho, a Portuguese forester who saw all his trees destroyed by wildfires in 2017.

Wildfires are predicted to become more commonplace as forest cover dries out in an ever warmer world. “The EU carries responsibility for these issues as a world leader,” insisted Carvalho.

The plaintiffs include a family from the Italian Alps which has seen ice-based tourism dwindle due to warmer winters, one from a German island disappearing under rising ocean waters, and a group of Sweden’s indigenous Sami herders whose reindeer increasingly struggle to find food.

It could be several months before the court announces whether it will hear the case, officially submitted on Wednesday. German NGO Protect the Planet is carrying the costs of the application.

Published in Dawn, May 25th, 2018