what are the challenges for these new legal disputes around the environment?

Three hearings concerning TotalEnergies, Suez and EDF took place on Tuesday before the Paris Court of Appeal. They have in common files relating to the duty of vigilance of companies with regard to the human and environmental risks linked to their activities.

This is a new type of environmental litigation. The Paris Court of Appeal began to examine on Tuesday March 5 three cases based on what is called “the duty of vigilance of companies”. A law adopted in France in 2017, following the mobilization of numerous NGOs. It requires multinationals to prevent possible attacks that their activities could have on human rights, health or the environment.

This law is increasingly used by organizations, such as the Human Rights League, Our Business for All, France Nature Environment, or local authorities, to force multinationals to adopt more virtuous behavior. The Paris Court of Appeal has also set up a new chamber, specialized in this dispute. At this stage, it has been contacted for around fifteen cases, which concern, for example, deforestation in the Amazon, plastic pollution, or the financing of fossil fuels.

NGOs rejected at first instance

The first three files studied on Tuesday concern the TotalEnergies group, which is being asked to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to respect the Paris agreement, the Suez group, which is being prosecuted for repeated failures of one of its factories in Chile, a factory blamed for the contamination of a drinking water network, and the EDF group, accused of not having consulted indigenous populations as part of a wind farm project in Mexico.

At first instance the judges dismissed the applicant NGOs for procedural issues, which did not allow a judgment on the merits. The Paris Court of Appeal will rule on the admissibility of the files on June 18. To date, only one case has been successful. It concerns the La Poste group on human rights issues. The NGOs hope that the new chamber of the Paris Court of Appeal will therefore make it possible to strengthen the application of companies’ duty of vigilance in environmental matters, while awaiting European legislation, which is slow to be adopted.