(Geneva) Amid growing efforts to hold Russia accountable for its invasion of Ukraine, activists are calling on Europe’s top human rights court to condemn Moscow for “climate catastrophe.”
Russian environmental organization Ecodefense and 18 individuals filed a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) last year, claiming that Moscow is worsening the global climate crisis.
“Russia is killing the climate,” said Ecodefense co-president Vladimir Slivyak, who received the 2021 Right Livelihood Prize, an “alternative Nobel,” in a recent interview with AFP.
He noted that Russian President Vladimir Putin had signed the 2015 Paris climate agreement aimed at keeping global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial times.
Mr Slivyak accuses Moscow of making no efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions or reduce fossil fuel extraction.
According to him, internal policy documents show that Russia plans, at least for the next decade, to carry out “increasing extraction of coal, oil and gas”, with growth of up to 50%.
War fuels emissions
According to Mr Slivyak, who left Russia in 2021 amid a crackdown on civil society ahead of parliamentary elections, the increase in Russian greenhouse gas emissions is linked to the war in Ukraine.
Although official statistics are not available, he claims that “there must be a big increase in greenhouse gas emissions with the war” due to the extra production of tanks and weapons.
Moreover, “Russia can only continue the war if it sells enough fossil fuels,” he stressed, calling for more sanctions: “If the world stopped buying fossil fuels from Russia now, it would probably lead to the end of this war as early as this year.”
The plaintiffs filed their complaint with the ECHR last August, after first trying to take the case to Russia’s Supreme Court, which refused to hear them. “We want the court to decide that Russian policy is dangerous for the climate and the world,” Slivyak said.
Much worse
Not a first.
In a landmark ruling in April, the ECHR condemned Switzerland for its lack of climate action. But Russia’s situation is much worse, according to Mr Slivyak.
“Russia is undermining international efforts” to combat global warming, he believes.
Ecodefense asked the ECHR to speed up the processing of the Russian case, as the court has done for other climate-related issues. But the ECHR rejected their request last week, according to Ecodefense.
The last time Ecodefense helped bring a case to the ECHR was in 2013, when it was among the organisations calling for a ruling against Russian law requiring anyone receiving support from abroad to be listed as a foreign agent.
The court took nearly a decade to issue its decision, and while the 2022 ruling was in favor of the organizations, “it was too late,” Slivyak said, noting that the groups had already fled the country. A faster decision might have changed the course of history, he said.
” Previous ”
Following the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia was expelled from the Council of Europe. However, complaints about alleged violations committed by Russia before its exclusion on 16 September 2022 remain admissible before the ECHR.
While Russia is unlikely to care about the ECHR, Mr Slivyak insisted that getting a ruling in the case could be useful in shaping policy when Russia’s “fascist dictatorship” one day falls.
At the international level too, he added, it could set a “precedent” for governments to adopt more ambitious climate policies. “It could change everything.”