Swiss women’s climate lawsuit reverberates in South Korea

South Korea is one of the world’s leading economies, but its climate policy does not respect human rights. Now, after a historic court victory for the younger generation, older citizens are also demanding more ambitious climate targets. Both cases have a strong connection with Switzerland. The date of August 29, 2024 will long remain etched in the minds of the crowds of people, among them many youth, who were gathered outside South Korea’s Constitutional Court in Seoul. On that day, the court ruled in a landmark decision that the country’s climate change law did not protect the basic rights of future generations. This success “rode on the global momentum of climate litigation”, says Gwanhaeng Lee, a lawyer at Solutions for Our Climate (SFOC), an independent organisation that followed the case closely. “Recent victories in Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland all laid the foundation for the Korean claim,” he tells SWI swissinfo.ch. The group Youth 4 Climate Action, which leads ...