The Supreme Court today dismissed a lawsuit against the country’s climate and energy plan, ruling that the government’s proposals were not “arbitrary.” The appeal was filed by Greenpeace and other environmental organizations, which claimed that the plan approved by the Government did not do enough to tackle climate change.
Greenpeace, Ecologistas en Acción-CODA, Oxfam Intermón and the Coordinator of NGOs for development requested that the plan be partially annulled in terms of the revision of the objectives so as not to exceed a 1.5º C increase in global temperature, and that in no case the reduction of emissions, for the mentioned period, was less than 55% in 2030 compared to 1990.
The court has judged that the government’s plan is not arbitrary and conforms to the law and the climate commitments acquired by the European Union. In a draft update to its climate and energy plan, the Spanish government has proposed increasing its emissions reduction target by 2030. The proposed target is to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 32% from 1990 levels. , against the current target of 23%. The court holds that Spain’s decision to align itself with the efforts of the European Union cannot be considered “arbitrary”.
The judgment, among other arguments, indicates that the Paris Convention, on whose approaches the appellants are based, implies obligations assumed by all parties, including by the Spanish State, which cannot be blamed for its non-compliance, since it has adopted the decision to join the commitment assumed at the level of the European Union and, as stated in all the documents provided, the Union is, worldwide, the one that has led the greatest commitments of the Convention.
For the Supreme Court, “it is true that both the Paris Convention and the community regulations constitute minimum limits, but it must be concluded that this limit entails meeting the commitments, certainly general and not specified, assumed in the Convention, in such a way that the The policy followed by the Government and the Administration of our country is to assume, as authorized by the Agreement, the commitments as a member of the Union and subject to its criteria, that is, to the policy designed by the Union in which our Country has collaborated to approve”.
The high court also adds that if the limits of greenhouse gas emissions were now altered in the percentage requested in the lawsuit, which would be authorized by the Convention and community regulations, “the Spanish State would be imposed on the renegotiation of a policy designed, in full harmony, throughout the Union, that is, it would even be affecting the international powers, certainly peculiar in the case of the Union, of the Government”.
“Obviously, we cannot be more than in disagreement (…) with the Supreme Court”, said Inés Díez, from Greenpeace, who recalled that the sentence can be appealed before the Constitutional Court. The ruling comes on the same day that the United Nations Environment Program and Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law released a report on climate change-related litigation. The total number of climate change cases increased from 884 in 2017 to 2,180 in 2022, according to the report.
