65
DIGNITAS ■ The Fundamental Right to a Healthy Environment and Climate-Related ...
ABSTRACT
Of all the prominent environmental issues in recent decades, 
global climate change is the most serious and has been widely re-
garded as the most pressing global environmental problem of the 
current age. Ongoing carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels 
are behind the planet’s warming trend. The fossil fuel industry has 
had a unique role in causing, shaping, advancing, and defining 
the current unsustainable fossil fuel-dependent global economy. 
Climate science demands we decarbonise our entire economy 
to limit global warming to 1.5° Celsius. This paper builds its argu-
ments starting from the universal recognition of the human right 
to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment by the United 
Nations General Assembly in 2022. A healthy and functioning 
environment is a precondition for human welfare. Recognition 
of the right to a healthy environment contributes to improved 
environmental outcomes, including cleaner air, enhanced access 
to safe drinking water and reduced greenhouse gas emissions. 
One notable development in recent years has been an explosion 
in climate litigation. The cases are being brought against govern-
ments and corporate emitters for breach of environmental and 
human rights obligations to pressure them to take more ambi-
tious climate action. The two analysed cases from the Netherlands 
aptly illustrate that human rights arguments played a crucial role 
in the rulings.
Keywords: Human right to a healthy environment, Human 
rights-based climate change litigation, Urgenda case, Shell judge-
ment, Sustainable Development Goals
The Fundamental Right  
to a Healthy Environment  
and Climate-Related Lawsuits
Elijah S. Sritharan
*
* 
PhD candidate at the Faculty of Law, University of Maribor, Slovenia, elijah.sritharan@gmail.com.

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DIGNITAS ■ Climate Change Law
Temeljna pravica do zdravega okolja in 
podnebne tožbe
POVZETEK
Med vsemi pomembnimi okoljskimi vprašanji zadnjih desetle-
tij so globalne podnebne spremembe najresnejši in najbolj pereč 
globalni okoljski problem današnje dobe. Stalni izpusti ogljika 
zaradi kurjenja fosilnih goriv so glavni vzrok segrevanja planeta. 
Industrija fosilnih goriv ima edinstveno vlogo pri povzročanju, 
oblikovanju, napredovanju in definiranju trenutnega netrajno-
stnega globalnega gospodarstva, ki temelji na fosilnih gorivih. 
Podnebna znanost zahteva razogljičenje celotnega gospodarstva, 
da bi omejili globalno segrevanje na 1,5 °C. Prispevek podaja ar-
gumente na podlagi univerzalnega priznanja človekove pravice 
do čistega, zdravega in trajnostnega okolja, ki jo je Generalna 
skupščina Združenih narodov priznala leta 2022. Zdravo in de-
lujoče okolje je pogoj za človekovo blaginjo. Priznanje pravice 
do zdravega okolja prispeva k izboljšanim okoljskim rezultatom, 
vključno z bolj čistim zrakom, izboljšanim dostopom do varne 
pitne vode in zmanjšanjem izpustov toplogrednih plinov. Ena od 
pomembnih novosti zadnjih let je porast podnebnih tožb. Nosilci 
pravic vlagajo tožbe proti vladam in gospodarskim družbam za-
radi kršenja okoljskih in človekovih pravic, da bi jih spodbudili k 
bolj ambicioznim podnebnim ukrepom. Dva analizirana primera 
iz Nizozemske ustrezno ponazarjata, da so imeli argumenti o člo-
vekovih pravicah ključno vlogo pri sodbah.
Ključne besede: človekova pravica do zdravega okolja, pod-
nebne tožbe na podlagi človekovih pravic, zadeva Urgenda, sod-
ba proti Shellu, cilji trajnostnega razvoja
1. Introduction
Climate change has a catastrophic impact on communities’ 
lives and livelihoods all over the world. There is increasing con-
sensus that climate change will give rise to mass displacement of 
people (Atapattu, 2021, p. 245). The problem of climate change is 
currently the largest threat to the environment and human rights. 
It has become over the past decade the pre-eminent environmen-

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DIGNITAS ■ The Fundamental Right to a Healthy Environment and Climate-Related ...
tal policy issue at the international level. Its prominence is rooted 
in the global nature of the problem and the impossibility for any 
one state or groups of states to address it in the absence of full 
global cooperation (Cullet, 2016, p. 498). The recent synchronous 
adoption of landmark United Nations (UN) agreements – the Sen-
dai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, Sustainable Devel-
opment Goals (SDGs), and Conference of the Parties (COP)21’s 
Paris Conference – has created a rare but significant opportunity 
to build coherence across different but overlapping internation-
al policy areas (Murray, Parkinson, & Bloomer, 2021). While the 
Synthesis Report – the Summary for Policy Makers – for the sixth 
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
1
 assessment 
concluded that “human activities, principally through emissions 
of greenhouse gases (GHGs), have unequivocally caused global 
warming,” the international community has been slow to take 
proportionate action (Selin & VanDeveer, 2023, p. 253).
The artificiality of state borders becomes clear when consider-
ing climate change; no matter where GHGs are emitted, they will 
contribute to global warming. Still, national borders prove to be 
real obstacles to formulate an effective answer to climate change. 
Secondly, the short-term bias of political systems poses an obsta-
cle to effective climate regulation. Politicians accountable in short 
election cycles hardly feel the urgency of the problem and fail 
to implement long-term solutions (Burgers, 2023). Vulnerability 
to climate change cuts across geographical boundaries, and it is 
often the poor in all parts of the world that are affected the most. 
The increasing intensity of climate-induced disruption around the 
world has revealed how marginalised communities bear some of 
the worst devastation inflicted by climate disasters magnifying 
as they do existing forms of social inequality on racial, class, and 
gender lines (Bulkeley & Newell, 2023, pp. 65-66).
Since the effects of climate change transcend across territo-
rial boundaries and the climate change is now felt on a planetary 
scale, it has been regarded as one of the common concerns of 
the humankind (Desai, 2023, p. 4). Increasing temperatures, ris-
ing sea levels, extreme weather events, melting permafrost and 
1 
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established in 1988 to provide inter-
nationally coordinated scientific assessments of the magnitude, timing and potential environment 
and socio-economic impact of climate change and realistic response strategies. It was formed by the 
World Meteorological Organisation and the United Nations Environment Programme.

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DIGNITAS ■ Climate Change Law
changes in precipitation patterns all have direct impacts on hu-
man rights, threatening the enjoyment of economic, social, and 
cultural rights, civil and political rights, and collective rights such 
as the right to self-determination. It is unsurprising that the issue 
is both at the top of the international political agenda and one of 
significant public interest. These impacts, which are now acutely 
felt around the world, will intensify dramatically over the coming 
decades, impeding access to food, shelter, clean water, and other 
basic necessities for vast swathes of the world’s population. As 
the effects of the climate change become more immediate, so 
too does the recognition that states have concrete human rights 
obligations to address environmental harms, and that in turn, hu-
man rights must be at the center of states’ responses to climate 
change. The urgency of the global climate problem has prompted 
an increasing turn to the courts to accelerate action (Narula, 2021, 
pp. 135-169).
In the mid-twentieth century, the environment was simply 
not at the forefront of the international community’s concerns. 
Although many of the rights enshrined in the 1948 Universal 
Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)
2
 cannot be meaningfully 
achieved without a healthy natural environment, the word en-
vironment is nowhere to be found in the Declaration. Further-
more, the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR)
3
, 
the 1961 European Social Charter (ESC)
4
, the 1966 International 
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)
5
, and the 1966 In-
ternational Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights 
(ICESCR)
6
 do not explicitly lay down the right to a sound and 
healthy environment. In the specific case of the climate change 
issue, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate 
Change (UNFCCC)
7
, which aims to reduce GHG concentrations in 
the atmosphere, prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference 
with the climate system, slow down global warming and mitigate 
2 
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (adopted 10 December 1948 UNGA Res 217 A(III).
3 
Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (European Convention 
on Human Rights) (adopted 4 November 1950, entered into force 3 September 1953).
4 
Council of Europe, European Social Charter (published 18 October 1961, entered into force 26 
February) ETS 35.
5 
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (adopted16 December 1966, entered into force 
23 March 1976) 999 UNTS 171.
6 
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (adopted 16 December 1966, ente-
red into force 3 January 1976) 993 UNTS 3.
7 
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) (adopted 9 May 1992, entered 
into force 21 March 1994) UNTC XVII.7.

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DIGNITAS ■ The Fundamental Right to a Healthy Environment and Climate-Related ...
its consequences, and the Paris Agreement
8
, which commits par-
ties to holding the increase of average global temperature below 
2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the 
temperature increase to 1.5°C, are the essential contractual sourc-
es of international climate law (Harrington, 2021).
In July 2022, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) 
adopted a resolution recognising the right to a clean, healthy and 
sustainable environment as a human right; the text was similar to 
a resolution adopted by the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) in 
2021, recognising the right to a healthy environment and inviting 
the General Assembly to consider the matter.
9
 The universal rec-
ognition of the human right to a healthy environment changed 
the pantheon of human rights. This new right offers to reorient 
human rights to better address the interdependent relationship 
between humans and the environment (Clark & Goldblatt, 2023, 
p. 65). It is now recognised that a healthy environment is essential 
to the realisation of a vast array of human rights. Although this is 
not legally binding, it contains strong political commitments and 
could be a catalyst for more ambitious action on environmental 
issues. It became clear during the negotiations what a profound 
impact climate and environmental crisis has and will have on en-
suring human rights (Ruppel & Dobers, 2023, p. 161).
With the urgency of the climate problem growing and the pros-
pect of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5°C slipping away, 
there is an increasing turn to the courts to accelerate action (Peel 
& Markey-Towler, 2022). The rapid rise in climate litigation glob-
ally suggests that courts can and will play a critically significant 
role in advancing planetary stewardship in the climate context 
(Kotze, 2022). Developments in climate science, and in particular 
a more robust scientific basis and methods, and legal discourse 
around accountability for climate change for holding private ac-
tors legally accountable for the harm experienced by weather 
events that have become more extreme due to climate change 
(Paiement, 2023, p. 285). Climate change litigation is defined as 
cases brought before courts to establish legal responsibility for 
the catastrophic consequences of global warming (Burgers, 2023, 
8 
Paris Agreement (adopted 12 December 2015, entered into force 4 November 2016), UN Doc FCCC/
CP/2015/L.9/Rev.1.
9 
UNGA (2022) The human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment; Resolution A/
Res/76/300, 28 July 2022; HRC (2021), The human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable enviro-
nment; Resolution A/HRC/RES/48/13, 8 October 2021 

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DIGNITAS ■ Climate Change Law
p. 197). As of May 2024, there were over 2,666 ongoing or con-
cluded cases around the world: 233 of these cases were filed in 
2023 (Setzer & Higham, 2024). Climate cases have been brought 
under a collection of laws regulating public and private actors, 
as well as various aspects of the causes and consequences of cli-
mate change. These include claims brought in tort, public trust, 
consumer law, corporate law, administrative law, constitutional 
law, and human rights law (Peel & Markey-Towler, 2022, p. 1486). 
In a number of climate cases brought before court in European 
private law, the claimants aim to defend the rights and interests 
of people from across current and future generations. Litigants 
in these cases aim to produce ambitious and systemic outcomes, 
such as advancing climate policy, raising public awareness, and 
transforming government or corporate behaviour. The concept 
of strategic climate lawsuit now spans multiple jurisdictions, be-
fore national, regional, and international fora. Thus, the relevance 
of this paper’s observations might exceed the European private 
law realm (Peel & Markey-Towler, 2022, p. 1484; Burgers, 2023, 
p. 197).
This study discusses the right to a healthy environment, which 
will be followed by an analytic look at a couple of recent rulings 
at the highest level in European national courts, often drawing 
on human rights-based arguments to environmental protection 
and climate change. As the need to tackle dangerous climate 
change becomes ever more urgent, activists have turned to court 
to force governments and private actors to take radical action. 
Faced with what is perceived as a failure on the part of public 
authorities and private companies, the law is increasingly relied 
on to serve various objectives: to encourage public authorities 
or private actors to take stronger measures to mitigate climate 
change, to implement more ambitious policies, to stop a project 
that emits large quantities of GHG, etc. The study also examines 
the unequal impacts of climate change and the implications for 
human rights. Section 3 examines two national court rulings 
from the point of view of the right to a healthy environment, 
other human rights, and environmental rights. Its emphasis is on 
the examples of effective rights-based climate litigation in over-
seas jurisdictions. Several private law cases target private parties 
like oil corporations, this paper studies cases that use private 
(procedural) law against government authorities. The analysed 

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DIGNITAS ■ The Fundamental Right to a Healthy Environment and Climate-Related ...
rulings are the 2019 Dutch Supreme Court’s ruling in The State 
of the Netherlands v. Urgenda Foundation (Urgenda case) and 
the 2021 judgement of the District Court in The Hague in the 
case of Vereniging Milieudefensie and others v. Royal Dutch 
Shell PLC (RDS) (Shell judgment).
2.  Recognition of the Human Right  
to a Healthy Environment
2.1. The Right to a Healthy Environment: Global Perspectives
Over the past decades, the right to a healthy environment has 
received ample international attention and recognition. The uni-
versal recognition of the human right to a clean, healthy and sus-
tainable environment by the UNGA on the 28
th
 of July 2022 trans-
formed the pantheon of human rights (Magraw & Siemes, 2023, p. 
88). The HRC and General Assembly resolutions recognising the 
right to a healthy environment were preceded by several decades 
of discussion and deliberation on the linkages between human 
rights and the environment. By adding an environmental right for 
the first time, the UNGA filled a gap in the human rights regime. 
This right is important in focusing on the interrelationship be-
tween the full enjoyment of all human rights with the protection 
of the environment (Clark & Goldblatt, 2023, p. 65).
This interrelationship recognises the value that a human rights 
lens can bring to any regulatory responses to the environmen-
tal challenges faced by humanity in order to better address the 
complex inequalities and injustices generated by climate change. 
In the context of climate change and its already felt and future 
harms to human and non-human life, the right to a healthy envi-
ronment highlights the need to reorient human rights to better 
account for our embedded relationship with the environment 
(Clark & Goldblatt, 2023, p. 65). The resolution explicitly recognis-
es that the impact of climate change, the unsustainable manage-
ment and use of natural resources, the pollution of air, land and 
water, the unsound management of chemicals and waste, and the 
resulting loss in biodiversity interfere with the enjoyment of this 
right – and that environmental damage has negative implications, 
both direct and indirect, for the effective enjoyment of all human 

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DIGNITAS ■ Climate Change Law
rights.
10
 Environmental consciousness did not exist in 1948 when 
the UDHR was finalised (Magraw & Siemes, 2023, p. 88).
On the conceptual front, the explanation of the relationship 
between human rights and the environment conducted by many 
people, including by the first UN Independent Expert and sub-
sequent Special Rapporteur on human rights and environment, 
John H. Knox – led to the realisation that there is a correlative 
interdependence between human rights and the environment. 
In his work as the inaugural officeholder for the mandate, John 
Knox significantly advanced the notion that human rights and 
environmental protection are interdependent in that one’ s abil-
ity to enjoy the rights to health and life, among numerous other 
rights, depends on living in a healthy natural environment (Naru-
la, 2021, p. 152). It is now recognised that a healthy environment 
is essential to the realisation of human rights such as the rights to 
life, health, and culture; and protecting the environment requires 
the exercise of human rights such as the rights to participate and 
to freedoms of expression, association, and assembly (Magraw & 
Siemes, 2023, p. 88).
While the right to a healthy environment has not been ex-
pressed in any treaty at the international level, binding formula-
tions of the right to a healthy environment exist through the adop-
tion and interpretation of many different national constitutions 
and laws, human rights treaties, and multilateral environmental 
agreements at the regional and national levels (Kron, 2023, p. 
1626). The interdependence of the right to a healthy environment 
and all other fundamental rights has been widely acknowledged 
for years. As of 2023, more than 160 states of the United Nations, 
primarily in the Global South
11
 have constitutional rights and/
or provisions on the environment. The right is found in many 
regional human rights instruments, beginning with the African 
Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights
12
 in 1981. In addition, the 
right to a healthy environment appears in the Protocol to the Af-
10 
UN Human Rights Council, Resolution 48/13 (adopted on 8 October 2021) UN Doc. A/HRC/
RES/48/13; UN General Assembly, Resolution adopted on July 28, 2022, UN Doc. A/RES/76/300. 
11 
One explanation for the Global South’s embrace of the right to a healthy environment is its dispro-
portionate exposure to environmental and human rights abuses from extractive and polluting indu-
stries that benefit Northern states, transnational corporations, and national elites. See, eg. Carmen 
G. Gonzalez, “The Right to a Healthy Environment and the Global South.” AJIL Unbound 117 (2023): 
173-78. https://doi.org/10.1017/aju.2023.26 
12 
African Charter on Human and People’s Rights, 21 ILM 158, Article 24 (entered into force October 
21, 1986).

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DIGNITAS ■ The Fundamental Right to a Healthy Environment and Climate-Related ...
rican Charter on Women in Africa, adopted by the African Union 
in 2003, the Arab Charter on Human Rights in 2004, and the 2012 
Human Rights Declaration of the Association of Southeast Asian 
Nations,
13
 and the San Salvador Protocol to the American Con-
vention on Human Rights in the Area of Economic, Social and 
Cultural Rights in 1988.
14
 The Aarhus Convention states in its first 
article that parties shall guarantee rights of information, participa-
tion, and remedy in environmental matters “in order to contrib-
ute to the protection of the right of every person of present and 
future generations to live in an environment adequate to his or 
her health and well-being” (Knox, 2021, p. 786).
Even though the right to a healthy environment has not led 
to a green revolution in the multiple jurisdictions in which it has 
been explicitly implemented, it cannot be denied that the right 
to a healthy environment has served as a catalyst for stronger 
environmental policies, stricter enforcement, stronger environ-
mental performance and greater public participation in environ-
mental decision-making. There appears to be a mutually reinforc-
ing relationship between the right to a healthy environment and 
procedural rights. In the wake of the adoption of the 1992 Rio 
Declaration, which represented the first comprehensive effort at 
the international level to highlight the normative importance of 
access to information, public participation and access to justice 
in environmental matters in its renowned Principle 10, the inter-
section between the right to a healthy environment and proce-
dural environmental rights became an increasingly groundbreak-
ing battleground for many environmental lawyers (Schoukens & 
Bouquelle, 2024, p. 14)
The terms used to describe the right have varied across various 
times and geographic contexts, and the terminology has at times 
been criticized for being vague and open-ended. While there is 
no universally recognised definition of the right to a healthy en-
vironment, it has often been characterised as containing substan-
tive elements (clean air, a safe and stable climate, access to safe 
water and adequate sanitation, healthy and sustainably produced 
13 
Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples; Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa, 
Arts. 18-19 (adopted July 1, 2003, entered into force Nov. 25, 2005; Arab Charter on Human Rights, 
reprinted in 12 Int’l Hum. Rts. Rep. 893 (2005), Art. 38 (entered into force Mar. 15, 2008); ASEAN Hu-
man Rights Declaration, para. 28(f) (adopted Nov. 18, 2012).
14 
Additional Protocol to the American Convention on Human Rights in the Area of Economic, Social 
and Cultural Rights, OAS Treaty Series No. 69, Art. 11(1) (entered into force Nov. 1999). 

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DIGNITAS ■ Climate Change Law
food, non-toxic environments in which to live, work, study and 
play, and healthy biodiversity and ecosystems) and procedural el-
ements (access to information, access to meaningful participation 
in decision-making and access to justice). As per the Framework 
Principles prepared by Special Rapporteur John Knox, the right 
to a healthy environment (like other human rights) is accompa-
nied by access rights such as the rights to access to information, 
freedom of opinion, freedom of expression, and assembly, and 
includes the obligation not to discriminate (Kron, 2023, p. 1627; 
Magraw & Siemes, 2023, p. 88). These connections were further 
cemented with the 2015 adoption of the Paris Agreement to the 
UNFCCC. The Agreement’s Preamble makes clear that all parties 
“should, when taking action to address climate change, respect, 
promote and consider their respective obligations on human 
rights” (Narula, 2021, p. 153).
International rights-based efforts to better protect the envi-
ronment go back to the first international conference on the 
human environment held in Stockholm. Principle 1 of the 1972 
Stockholm Declaration attempted to link human rights and en-
vironmental protection, declaring that: “Man has the fundamen-
tal right to freedom, equality and adequate conditions of life, in 
an environment of a quality that permits a life of dignity and 
well-being, and he bears a solemn responsibility to protect and 
improve the environment for present and future generations”.
15
 
This duty of care concept from the second part of Principle 1 of 
the Stockholm Declaration recurred in the 1994 report of the UN 
Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection 
of Minorities and the associated proposed declaration and draft 
principles on human rights and the environment (Kron, 2023, pp. 
1626-1627).
16
Although the Stockholm Declaration has shaped every inter-
national environmental conference and multilateral environmen-
tal agreement since, the Declaration has lacked binding force, 
and only recently, however, has international law recognised that 
15 
Declaration of the UN Conference on the Human Environment, UN Doc. A/Conf.48/14/Rev.1 (June 
5-16, 1972). 
16 
Commission on Human Rights, Human Rights and the Environment: Final Report Prepared by Mrs. 
Fatma Zohra Ksentini, Special Rapporteur, UN Doc. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1994/9, 6 July 1994, Annex I, Draft 
Principle 21: “All persons, individually and in association with others, have the duty to protect and 
preserve the environment.” Regarding due diligence as a standard of care, see e.g. ILA Study Group 
on Due Diligence in International Law (ILA Study Group), Second Report, July 2016, p.2. 

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DIGNITAS ■ The Fundamental Right to a Healthy Environment and Climate-Related ...
the human rights and environmental field are intertwined. Fol-
lowing the Stockholm Conference, countries made a series of ef-
forts to keep environmental protection and the right to a healthy 
environment on the agenda. Since the 1970s, several countries 
have formally recognised the right to a healthy environment as a 
constitutional or statutory right. Nationally, as of 2023, over 160 
countries recognise a right to a healthy environment at a regional, 
national or subnational level (Schoukens & Bouquelle, 2024; Bo-
gos, 2024).
17
2.2. Climate Protection, Sustainability and Human Rights
The 17 Sustainable Development Goals
18
 of the United Na-
tions’ 2030 Agenda are all related to individual human rights to 
varying degrees and are people-oriented and intended to ensure 
sustainable development at economic, social, and environmental 
levels. Sustainable Development is a normative concept. From a 
legal standpoint, Jorge Viñuales notes that the concept of sustain-
able development means: (1) development which, as a necessary 
procedural step, ‘takes into account’ environmental protection; 
and (2) which does so in a way that is consistent with the envi-
ronmental treaty obligations undertaken by a country or, at the 
very least, with the core content of customary international en-
vironmental law applicable to all countries (i.e. the prevention 
principle, integrating the duty of due diligence in the context 
of environmental protection, as further expressed in procedural 
form by the duty to co-operate and the duty to conduct an envi-
ronmental impact assessment (EIA)) (Vinuales, 2021, p. 290).
Only since the establishment of the 1972 Stockholm Declara-
tion has the concept of environmental rule of law been intro-
duced into the focal area of legal discourses in the international 
arena. The interplay between legal rights and obligations is at the 
heart of the rule of law, which is the key principle of governance 
that protects the integrity of rights against arbitrary exercise of 
power by the State. If the rule of law is translated into the context 
of environmental governance, it is presented as a set of environ-
17 
The 1972 Stockholm Declaration facilitated the manifestation of the right to a healthy environment 
at regional and national level; see United Nations Environment Programme (2023), Environmental 
Rule of Law: Tracking Progress and Charting Future Directions. Nairobi. https://wedocs.unep.org/
handle/20.500.11822/43943 
18 
UNGA RES 70/1, ‘Transforming our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (21 
December 2015) UN Doc A/RES/70/1.

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DIGNITAS ■ Climate Change Law
mental governance mechanisms, principles, and practices that 
hold all entities equally accountable to publicly enacted, equally 
enforced, and independently adjudicated laws that are consistent 
with sustainable development principles as well as human rights 
principles, which enhance environmental governance by linking 
environmental sustainability to fundamental human rights. Such a 
linkage further shapes a rights-based approach to environmental 
protection, whereby the right to a healthy environment as a hu-
man right has the potential to become the most extensive form of 
protection (Zhang, 2024, p. 36).
Although not legally binding, the SDGs represent the most 
comprehensive approach to socio-economic sustainable devel-
opment in the international community. The SDGs promote en-
vironmental justice because these goals address a variety of social 
concerns, including poverty, sanitation, climate action, peace and 
justice (Collin & Collin, 2021, p. 129). SDG 13 aims for urgent and 
ambitious climate protection measures to combat climate change 
and its impacts and corresponds to the Paris Agreement in its 
content. From the perspective of climate protection, for example, 
SDGs can be identified whose achievement would be particularly 
endangered by climate change, which would at the same time 
be linked to the endangerment of individual human rights. For 
example, climate change is a crisis multiplier, and thus the non-
achievement of SDG 13 threatens many people’s livelihoods and 
food security, e.g., through crop failures due to extreme droughts, 
which also endangers SDG 2, “No Hunger”. To stay with the exam-
ple of crop failures, crop failures and the resulting lack of income 
also threaten SDG 1, “No Poverty”. Extreme weather events, and 
in particular heavy rainfall, increase the risk of disease, on the 
one hand by affecting the cleanliness of drinking water and, on 
the other, by making breeding conditions more favourable for in-
sects that transmit diseases such as malaria. This also affects SDG 
3, “Health and well-being”, as well as SDG 6, “Clean water and 
sanitation”. The worse the achievement of SDG 13, the worse the 
achievement of the SDGs on cities and consumption (SDG 11 and 
12) will be. To put it more drastically: without progress in combat-
ing climate change, some SDGs will remain largely unattainable 
(Ruppel & Dobers, 2023, p. 163).
At the same time, the SDGs themselves set important goals, 
the achievement of which automatically contributes to climate 

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DIGNITAS ■ The Fundamental Right to a Healthy Environment and Climate-Related ...
protection, for example, the change in energy production in SDG 
7, more sustainable industrialisation in SDG 9 or changed con-
sumption and production behaviour in SDG 12. The legal debate 
on sustainable development law is clearly dominated by one part 
of it, climate protection law, which is standardised as a binding 
international treaty in the Paris Agreement of 2015. The protect-
ed good of the Paris Agreement is the climate, which is to be 
protected from human influence. Despite different factors in its 
approach, the Paris Agreement fits into the SDGs as an environ-
ment-related SDG13, so to speak, due to its goal of keeping the 
Earth livable for humankind. Needless to say, that failure to act 
and address the climate crisis will inevitably lead to an increase 
in natural disasters with devastating effects on the protection of 
human rights (Ruppel & Dobers, 2023, p. 164).
The UNFCCC makes clear that “the parties have a right to, and 
should, promote sustainable development.” The Paris Agreement 
also emphasises the importance of economic and social factors, as 
well as sustainable development per se, in assessing and accom-
plishing the needs of global environment. In this sense, neither 
the SDGs nor the Paris Agreement should be treated as so-called 
self-contained systems; the SDGs are not intended to detract from 
or collide with the Paris Agreement but that there is an insepara-
ble connection between the two (Harrington, 2021).
Many scholars argue that the right to breathe clean air is an 
essential element of the right to a healthy and sustainable envi-
ronment (Chen & Renteln, 2023, p. 291). Climate has a place in 
the fundamental right to a clean, healthy and sustainable envi-
ronment as approved by the United Nations. The fact remains 
that climate warming is an air pollution problem with a classic 
profile. To substances that occur naturally in our environment 
and are beneficial to life on the planet in their natural concentra-
tions, human activity has added an excessive amount of the same 
substances, resulting in disruptive concentrations (Billiet, 2024, 
p. p.100).
Global warming and the associated weather extremes such 
as droughts, storms, hot spells or heavy rainfall will increasingly 
affect human rights, in particular the codified inherent rights to 
life (Article 6 ICCPR), health (Article 12 ICESCR) and an adequate 
standard of living (Article 11 ICESCR) (Ruppel & Dobers, 2023, p. 
162). Lack of progress in combating climate change will make it 

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DIGNITAS ■ Climate Change Law
very difficult to realise most of the SDGs, just as the way in which 
SDGs concerning energy, food, sustainable cities, production, 
consumption, work, and growth are pursued will have a huge 
impact on the viability of climate goals (Bulkeley & Newell, 2023, 
p. 64).
2.3.  The Right to a Healthy Environment: A European 
Perspective
Focusing on European legal instruments, the ECHR has no 
provision that explicitly refers to the environment. This is not 
surprising given that the Convention was adopted in 1950, a 
time when environmental protection was not a priority. At the 
same time, the case law of the European Court of Human Rights 
(ECtHR) shows that many aspects of the right to a good envi-
ronment can be covered by the ECHR; to be fair, the ECtHR has 
used existing rights creatively to adjudicate environmental issues. 
The ECtHR has imposed a whole series of positive obligations 
on states to prevent, remedy or investigate violations of the right 
to life (Article 2 ECHR), the right to respect for private life, fam-
ily life and the home (Article 8 ECHR) and the right to property 
(Article 1 First Protocol (P1) ECHR) in relation to environmental 
problems. However, the ECtHR will only hold these Convention 
provisions applicable if (a) environmental damage affects an in-
dividual directly, personally and to a sufficient extent, and (b) en-
vironmental damage reaches a certain minimum level of severity. 
The intensity, duration and physical and mental consequences of 
environmental damage are key factors in determining whether 
this threshold is attained. The Court’s judgments are binding, and 
countries must comply with them (Gerards, 2023, pp. 508-521; 
Atapattu & Schapper, Human Rights and the Environment: Key 
Issues, 2019, pp. 87-91).
In Europe, environmental rights have been strengthened 
through enshrining procedural environmental rights in the 
Aarhus Convention, a treaty developed through the United Na-
tions Economic Commission for Europe. Regionally, the Aarhus 
Convention is noteworthy from a fundamental rights perspective 
because it is recognised in the preamble that adequate protection 
of the environment is essential to the enjoyment of basic human 
rights and every person has the right to live in an environment 

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DIGNITAS ■ The Fundamental Right to a Healthy Environment and Climate-Related ...
adequate to his or her health and well-being. The Aarhus Conven-
tion contains numerous standards for individuals on access to 
information, participation in decision-making and legal protec-
tion. These three aspects also come to the fore in the case law of 
the ECHR on the procedural positive obligations resulting from 
Articles 2 and 3 ECHR.
19
In the European Union (EU)
20
, the Treaty on the European 
Union (TEU), in turn, stipulates in Article 3 that the Union “shall 
work for the sustainable development of Europe” based on, inter 
alia, “a high level of protection and improvement of the qual-
ity of the environment”. In the Treaty on the Functioning of the 
European Union (TFEU), this notion is present in Article 11: “En-
vironmental Protection requirements must be integrated into all 
EU policies and activities, in particular with a view to promoting 
sustainable development” (Burgers, 2023, p. 200). Article 37 of 
the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (CFREU) recognises rights 
related to the environment as fundamental rights, stipulating that 
“a high level of environmental protection and the improvement 
of the quality of the environment must be integrated into the poli-
cies of the Union and ensured in accordance with the principle 
of sustainable development”. Article 191(1) of the TFEU specifies 
the EU’s policy objectives around the environment. These are 
the preservation, protection and improvement of the environ-
ment, the protection of human health, the prudent and rational 
utilization of natural resources and the promotion of measures 
at the international level to deal with regional or worldwide en-
vironmental problems, in particular combating climate change 
(Gerards, 2023, p. 517).
In several climate cases brought before courts in European 
private law, the claimants aim to defend the rights and interests 
of future generations. Climate change litigation is defined as cases 
brought before courts to establish legal responsibility for the cata-
strophic consequences of global warming. Most of the climate 
19 
Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-Making, and Access to Justi-
ce in Environmental Matters (Aarhus, signed on 21 April 1998 and entered into force on 30 October 
2001).
20 
The European Union (EU) is based on the rule of law. This means that every action taken by the 
EU is founded on treaties that have been approved voluntarily and democratically by all EU member 
countries. The EU treaties are binding agreements between EU member countries. They set out objec-
tives, rules for EU institutions, how decisions are made and the relationship between the EU and its 
member countries. Two core function treaties, the Treaty on European Union (originally signed in 
Maastricht in 1992, The Maastricht Treaty) and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union 
(originally signed in Rome in 1957, The Treaty of Rome), lay out how EU operates. 

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DIGNITAS ■ Climate Change Law
cases have been attempts to get governments to live up to what 
is seen as their commitments. A report published in June 2024 
by the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the 
Environment and the Centre for Climate Change Economics and 
Policy shows more than 2,666 cases have been captured in the Sa-
bin Center’s climate litigation databases. 233 of these cases were 
filed in 2023. Around 70% of these have been filed since 2015, 
the year the Paris Agreement was adopted. Notably, human rights 
arguments are being utilised in a significant number of cases. Hu-
man rights advocates have not only filed lawsuits against states 
but also against companies (Setzer & Higham, 2024).
While these lawsuits rely on many different grounds, but they 
share a common goal: they challenge the lack of ambition of a 
state’s climate policy and seek to force it to adopt measures to 
combat climate change. Faced with what is perceived as a failure 
on the part of public authorities or private parties like oil corpo-
rations, the law is increasingly relied on and used as weapon to 
serve various objectives: to encourage public authorities or pri-
vate parties to take stronger measures to mitigate climate change, 
to implement more ambitious policies, to obtain compensation 
for damage suffered, to stop a project that emits large quantities 
of GHG (Hautereau-Boutonnet & Maljean-Dubois, 2023, pp. 151-
160).
3. Human Rights-based Climate Litigation
The UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement are the essential con-
tractual sources of international climate law. The UNFCCC con-
tains formally binding substantive and procedural obligations on 
mitigation and adaptation the prescriptiveness of which, how-
ever, is strongly reduced by the lack of precision of their con-
tent. The Paris Agreement also is a formally binding international 
agreement (Rehbinder, 2023, p. 139).
As the effects of climate change become more immediate and 
clear, so too does the recognition that states have concrete human 
rights obligations to address environmental harms, and that in 
turn, human rights must be at the centre of states’ responses to cli-
mate change (Narula, 2021, p. 151). States’ substantive obligations 
to address climate change can be grouped into five distinct but 
overlapping categories. Namely, states must: protect human rights 

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DIGNITAS ■ The Fundamental Right to a Healthy Environment and Climate-Related ...
from climate-related harms; mitigate climate change by regulating 
GHG emissions within their jurisdiction; cooperate internation-
ally to protect against climate-related harms; address the trans-
boundary impacts of climate change; ensure that human rights 
are safeguarded in all mitigation and adaptation activities. States 
also have procedural obligations with respect to climate change. 
Namely, states must ensure that the affected public: is adequate-
ly informed about the impacts of climate change; is adequately 
involved in decision-making around mitigation and adaptation 
measures; and has access to effective legal remedies when their 
rights are violated (Narula, 2021, pp. 153-157).
From a legal standpoint, connecting states’ climate change-re-
lated obligations to their human rights obligations enables access 
to legal claims and mechanisms that are not available under inter-
national environmental law where citizens typically do not have 
standing to bring claims against states for their failure to meet 
their environmental obligations. Human rights cases are break-
ing new ground. The world over, youth activists are pushing the 
boundaries of international human rights law, hoping to seek 
relief and compel action in the face of an uncertain future. One 
of the most noteworthy developments is the recent success of 
rights-based court actions in the field of climate change, with the 
decisions of the Dutch courts in the Urgenda and, more recently, 
Shell cases as the most remarkable standouts.
3.1. The Urgenda Case
States have human rights obligations to mitigate climate change 
by regulating GHG emissions within their jurisdiction. Domesti-
cally, the most publicised effort to date to use a state’s human 
right obligations to press for greater mitigation action was the 
case of Urgenda. The case is currently viewed as one of the most 
important European and global precedents for successful rights-
based climate litigation. The Urgenda case was initially launched 
in 2013, two years before the adoption of the Paris Agreement 
on climate change. In this case, the Dutch non-governmental or-
ganisation (NGO) Urgenda Foundation, initially together with 
some 900 Dutch citizens, requested the District Court to order 
the Dutch Government to reduce its GHG emissions by 40%, or 
at least by 25% compared to 1990 by the end of 2020. The lawsuit 

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DIGNITAS ■ Climate Change Law
was initiated on the basis of domestic tort law, but the legal ar-
guments supporting the claim were based on both national and 
international law (Wewerinke-Singh & McCoach, 2021).
In 2019, the Supreme Court upheld the claim by Urgenda 
against the Dutch State, confirming the earlier judgments of 
the District Court (2015) and the Court of Appeal of The Hague 
(2018), and ordering the State to reduce its GHG emissions by 
at least 25% below 1990 levels, by the end of 2020. The Dutch 
Supreme Court also upheld the Court of Appeal’s conclusion that 
the Dutch State had failed to comply with its positive obligations 
under human rights law, in particular Articles 2 and 8 of the ECHR 
(Bakker, 2021, pp. 199-224).
Based on the 2007 Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC, a 
new reduction target for developed countries of 25-45% by 2020 
compared to 1990 levels was formally adopted in the 2010 Can-
cun Pledges.
21
 In the international climate negotiations in Cancun, 
the Netherlands and other EU Member States acknowledged the 
need to reduce their emissions by 25-40% from 1990 levels by 
2020. However, the Dutch Government subsequently announced 
that it would not meet the reduction target, and that it would aim 
for a 14-17% reduction (Bakker, 2021). In 2013, Urgenda initiated 
a lawsuit stating that the Dutch Government had committed a tort 
by having lowered its GHG emission reduction target for 2020. In 
its first-instance court judgement delivered in 2015, the District 
Court confirmed Urgenda’s standing in this case, since it fulfilled 
the conditions for legal action by non-profit organisations set out 
in Article 3:305a of the Dutch Civil Code (Bogos, 2024, p. 325).
The District Court found for the plaintiff on the grounds that, 
given the severity of the impact of climate change and the signifi-
cant chance that dangerous climate change would occur unless 
mitigating measures were taken, the State had a duty of care to 
take mitigating measures in its own territory to prevent danger-
ous climate change. Its failure to do so amounted under Dutch 
law to unlawful hazardous negligence. The District Court based 
its reasoning on tort law and applied the concept of the State 
acting negligently towards claimants in accordance with the juris-
21 
UNFCCC Conference of the Parties, ‘Decision 1/CMP.6 The Cancun Agreements: Outcome of the 
Work of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties under the Kyoto 
Protocol at its Fifteenth Session’ (10-11 December 2010) UN Doc FCCC/KP/CMP/2010/12/Add.1, 
recital 6.

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DIGNITAS ■ The Fundamental Right to a Healthy Environment and Climate-Related ...
prudence on the doctrine of hazardous negligence developed to 
detail the requirement of acting with due care towards a society.
22
 
By contrast, the Hague Court of Appeal used the ECHR (Articles 
2 and 8 of the ECHR) as the direct basis for the existence of the 
duty of care. The Court of Appeal considered that States Parties 
to the ECHR have positive or due diligence obligations to prevent 
threats to the right to life, and to a private and family life, of per-
sons within their jurisdiction. The Court of Appeal referred to the 
jurisprudence of the ECtHR which affirmed that these obligations 
also apply to environmental harm. The Court of Appeal recalled 
the ECtHR’s recognition that the due diligence obligations of 
States deriving from these Articles may also apply to the preven-
tion of future infringements of the protected interests. Moreover, 
the Court of Appeal affirmed that the State’s duty of care “applies 
to all activities, public and non-public, which could endanger the 
rights protected in these articles”, adding that “if the government 
knows that there is a real and imminent threat, the State must 
take precautionary measures to prevent infringement as far as 
possible”. The Court of Appeal determined the existence of the 
“real and imminent threat” caused by climate change mainly on 
the basis of climate science, and concluded that “it is appropriate 
to speak of a real threat of dangerous climate change, resulting 
in the serious risk that the current generation of citizens will be 
confronted with the loss of life and/or a disruption of family life” 
(Bakker, 2021, pp. 205-207; Burgers, 2023, p. 205)
More specifically, the Dutch Supreme Court judgment con-
firmed the Court of Appeal’s finding that the Netherlands, as a 
State Party to the ECHR, must comply with certain positive obli-
gations in order to guarantee the enjoyment, by everyone within 
its jurisdiction, of the right to life and to a private and family 
life. Regarding the positive obligations of States, the ECtHR deter-
mined that in order to protect the right to life, States are “obliged 
to take appropriate steps if there is a real and immediate risk to 
persons and the state in question is aware of that risk.”
23
 Indeed, 
22 
Urgenda has relied on the “Kelderluik” criteria, which was taken from the 1965 Supreme Court on 
damage caused unknowingly by creating a dangerous situation (Cellar Hatch case) and is used to 
determine whether a conduct equates to unlawful endangerment. 
23 
The ECtHR has clarified that the term ‘real and immediate risk’ refers to a risk that is both genuine 
and imminent. The Dutch Supreme Court affirmed that the term ‘immediate’ does not refer to im-
minence in a temporal sense, but rather that the risk in question is directly threatening the persons 
involved. 

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DIGNITAS ■ Climate Change Law
when the right to life is threatened as a result of environmental 
harm or natural disaster, these positive obligations are considered 
to have a more collective dimension, in the sense that the State 
must take measures to protect a larger group of persons, such as a 
community or the population of a region where a certain risk oc-
curs that may directly threaten their lives. Regarding article 8, the 
Supreme Court cited the case law of the ECtHR establishing that 
“the obligation to take measures exists if there is a risk that serious 
environmental contamination may affect individuals’ well-being 
and prevent them from enjoying their homes in such a way as to 
affect their private and family life adversely (Bakker, 2021, pp. 
209-210).
The Supreme Court affirmed that “the Netherlands is obliged 
to do its part in order to prevent dangerous climate change, even 
if it is a global problem.” It has confirmed the partial responsibil-
ity of individual States for wrongful acts for which all States have 
a joint responsibility, applying it to the harmful consequences 
of climate change. The Supreme Court’s judgment has also con-
firmed and extended the collective or public interest dimension 
of individual human rights, especially the right to life and the 
right to private and family life, in the context of the risks caused 
by climate change. By extending the ECtHR’s environmental juris-
prudence in accordance with the application of positive human 
rights obligations to ensure the right to life and to respect for pri-
vate and family life, the Supreme Court ruled that the Netherlands 
owes a “duty of care” to protect its citizens from climate change 
and as such reduce its GHG emissions by 25% in 2020 (Naru-
la, 2021, pp. 154-155; Wewerinke-Singh & McCoach, 2021). For 
specifying the state duty of care, the Court relied on an extensive 
interpretation of the human rights set out in Articles 2 and 8 of 
the ECHR. In doing so, the Court went beyond existing case law 
of the European Court on Human Rights that had never before 
held that threats of remote environmental harm and in particular, 
future climate change were encompassed by the relevant human 
rights (Rehbinder, 2023, p. 145).
Like the judgement of the Court of Appeal, the Supreme Court 
held that climate change presents a “real threat…resulting in the 
serious risk that the current generation of citizens will be con-
fronted with loss of life and/or a disruption of family life”, and 
that under articles 2 and 8 of the Convention “the state has a duty 

85
DIGNITAS ■ The Fundamental Right to a Healthy Environment and Climate-Related ...
to protect against real threat” (Carnwath, 2024, pp. 250-251).
The state also argued that it is uncertain in science when, 
where and how dangerous climate change will materialise. The 
Supreme Court rejected this argumentation based on precaution-
ary principle, pointing out that the fact that the mere existence 
of a sufficiently genuine possibility that this risk will materialise 
means that suitable measures must be taken.” The Court adds that 
“the fact that this risk will only be able to materialise a few dec-
ades from now and that it will not impact specific persons or a 
specific group of persons, but large parts of the population does 
not mean…that Articles 2 and 8 ECHR offer no protection from 
this threat.” In substantiating this conclusion, the Supreme Court 
referred to the findings deriving from climate science, thereby 
recognising that science may constitute a deciding factor in es-
tablishing accountability of States breaching their human rights 
obligations (Burgers, 2023, p. 205; Bakker, 2021, p. 212). That has 
rightly been treated as a landmark case, in its recognition that the 
threat posed by climate change is a human rights issue under the 
Convention (Carnwath, 2024, pp. 250-251).
The judgement firmly establishes that Articles 2 and 8 of the 
ECHR impose a positive obligation on States that are Parties to 
the ECHR to take appropriate measures to do their part to address 
climate change. In analysing the Supreme Court’s judgement, it is 
important to note how the Supreme Court used an integrated ap-
proach to international law when interpreting and applying the 
ECHR, by relying on international climate change law – the prin-
ciples and provisions of the UNFCCC, most notably, the precau-
tionary principle and the principle of common but differentiated 
responsibilities and respective capabilities (CBDRRC) – to give 
substance to the positive obligations imposed on the Netherlands 
under Articles 2 and 8 of the ECHR.
3.2. Shell judgment
The Urgenda Foundation v State of the Netherlands litiga-
tion has sparked several lawsuits against governments. On 26 
May 2021, the District Court of the Hague passed an unprec-
edented ruling in Milieudefensie and others v Royal Dutch Shell 
PLC (RDS)
24
, holding a major transnational fossil-fuel company 
24 
The respondent, RDS, is a public limited company established under the laws of England and Wales, 

86
DIGNITAS ■ Climate Change Law
accountable for climate change.
25
 The court that rendered the 
judgement is the same one that rendered the first instance judg-
ment on 24 June 2015, in the Urgenda case. RDS is the parent 
company of the Shell group and one of the Carbon Majors, a 
limited group of fossil fuel producers that are collectively re-
sponsible for over 70% of GHG emissions since 1988. The land-
mark judgement recognised an obligation on the part of RDS 
to mitigate climate change. In the application of this obligation, 
RDS was ordered to cut its carbon dioxide (CO
2
) emissions by 
45% by 2030, as compared with 2019 levels, in line with the 
global emissions pathway for meeting the 1.5°C temperature 
goal contained in the Paris accord of 2015. This “reduction ob-
ligation” encompasses not only an obligation of result for the 
Shell group’s own activities but also a “significant best-efforts 
obligation” to reduce emissions throughout its value chain and 
any entity directly linked to its business operations, products, or 
services, including end-users (Sanger, 2021, p. 425). Milieudefen-
sie’s lawsuit against RDS, which although did not itself produce 
much GHG emissions, did set policy for the Shell group of com-
panies (which collectively, the Court noted, was responsible for 
more GHG emissions than many countries), constitutes a major 
development in the trajectory of direct climate change litigation 
against private actors, one which seeks to reimagine the energy 
corporation as an actor both responsible for, and vulnerable 
to, the harmful consequences of a changing climate (Paiement, 
2023, pp. 281-299; Wu, 2023, p. 754).
On 5 April 2019, Milieudefensie, along with six other NGOs 
and more than 17,000 citizens filed a class action against RDS, 
based on the climate impacts of the company’s global operations. 
The claimants argued that RDS had breached its standard of care 
by failing to set adequate GHG emissions targets consistent with 
the Paris Agreement. Regarding standing, Dutch civil law enables 
associations to bring class actions against private entities. The 
Court admitted a class action by six of the NGO plaintiffs, repre-
senting the interests of current and future generations of Dutch 
residents. It did not give standing to the seventh NGO, which 
with its head office in The Hague, and listed in New York, London, and Amsterdam. Since a restruc-
turing of the Shell group, in 2005, RDS has been the top holding company. It is the direct or indirect 
shareholder in more than 1,100 companies established in jurisdictions around the world. 
25 
District Court of the Hague, C/09/571932/HA ZA 19-379, 26 May 2021 (English version).

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DIGNITAS ■ The Fundamental Right to a Healthy Environment and Climate-Related ...
sought to represent the interests of foreign populations. The 
Court refused standing to the individual plaintiffs on the ground 
that they lacked “a sufficiently concrete individual interest” that 
distinguishes them from the common interest pursued by class 
action. This limitation of standing to public interest plaintiffs is 
broadly consistent with recent private climate litigation efforts in 
other jurisdictions. In this judgement, the Court had to determine 
the law applicable to Milieudefensie’s climate reduction claim 
against RDS. The Court ruled that Dutch law was applicable as 
the law of the place where the damage occurred Under Article 
4(1) Rome II and the law of the event giving rise to the damage 
under Article 7 Rome II as the place where the business decision 
was made, i.e., at the Dutch headquarters (Paiement, 2023, pp. 
285-289).
This emissions reduction obligation concerns the group’s en-
tire energy portfolio and the aggregate volume of all CO
2
 emis-
sions (Scope 1, 2, 3)
26
 associated with it. This is the first time 
that a court has imposed such a broad mitigation obligation 
on a corporation. The court based RDS’s emissions reduction 
obligation on its duty of care towards current and future Dutch 
residents. It is also one of the first occasions on which tort law 
has successfully been invoked in litigation on climate change 
mitigation. The Shell case is based on Article 6:162 of the Dutch 
Civil Code
27
 and, more specifically, the unwritten standard of 
care contained therein. The climate-related duty of care thus 
refers to an implied individual responsibility that RDS owes to 
Dutch residents, reflecting the internationally propagated and 
endorsed need for companies to genuinely take responsibility 
for CO
2
 emissions produced by their business relations (Kan-
ning, 2024, p. 203).
26 
Scope 1 emissions are those which occur from sources directly owned or operated by RDS; Scope 
2 emissions are those emitted by third parties from whom RDS has acquired electricity, heating for 
operations; and Scope 3 emissions include all other emissions resulting from the company’s activities 
and is often the main source of company-related GHG emissions. This category includes emissions 
that happen both upstream and downstream of the business activity, including by suppliers, in the 
transport of materials and products and, last but not least, by consumers.
27 
The “unwritten standard of care” (also referred to as the “open norm” in Dutch tort law) in Article 
6:162 of the Dutch Civil Code prohibits anyone, including private actors, from causing major danger 
to others when measures can be taken to prevent that danger from occurring (‘unlawful endanger-
ment’). Under Dutch tort law (Art. 6:162 section 2 Dutch Civil Code), a tortious act can also be defi-
ned as “a violation of what according to unwritten law has to be regarded as proper social conduct.” 
When looking for a standard of unwritten law, different legal sources, including principles of laws, 
juridical views and customs, can be used. 

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DIGNITAS ■ Climate Change Law
The “unwritten standard of care” from the Dutch Civil Code, 
which formed the basis of liability against RDS, allowed the Court 
to look at international law and other soft law instruments to 
determine the applicable standard of care (Wu, 2023, p. 755). In 
interpreting this stand, the court referred to, inter-alia, human 
rights – specifically the right to life and the right to respect for 
private and family life – and soft law endorsed by RDS, such as 
the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (Guid-
ing Principles),
28
 the UN Global Compact (UNGPs) and OECD 
Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises (MNE Guidelines)” (May-
er, 2022; Macchi & van Zeben, 2021).
In the suit against RDS, plaintiffs extend the Urgenda rationale 
to private companies, arguing that given the Paris Agreement’s 
goals and the scientific evidence regarding the dangers of climate 
change, RDS has a duty of care to take action to reduce its GHG 
emissions. The plaintiffs claimed that the company had violated 
its social duty of care. They argue that with its current policy, RDS 
does not live up to its commitments, even though it has known 
since the 1980s about the severe risks caused by climate change. 
The two main legal bases of the claim, which were also relied on 
in the Urgenda case, are first, Article 6:162 of the Dutch Civil Code 
– a civil law statute resembling the tort of negligence and second, 
the responsibility of RDS for its failure to protect human rights 
based on Articles 2 and 8 ECHR as well as in Articles 6 and 17 
of the ICCPR. Referring to the Court of Appeal’s Urgenda judge-
ment, the claimants assert that besides States, companies also 
have due diligence obligations under human rights law, arguing 
that through the production and selling of fossil fuels, RDS’s share 
in global GHG emissions is twice as high as that of the Dutch State 
as a whole. The plaintiffs recall that RDS has declared that its poli-
cies will be guided by international human rights standards for 
the private sector, including the UNGPS and the OCED Guide-
lines (Bakker, 2021, p. 217).
The Court interpreted the unwritten standard of care based 
on “the relevant facts and circumstances, the best available sci-
ence on dangerous climate change and how to manage it” and 
28 
Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: Implementing the United Nations ‘Protect, Re-
spect and Remedy,’ Annex to UNHRC, Report of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General 
on the Issue of Human Rights and Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises, John 
Ruggie (21 March 2011), UN Doc. A/HRC/17/31 (endorsed by the UN HRC, Res. 17/4, June 16, 2011).

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DIGNITAS ■ The Fundamental Right to a Healthy Environment and Climate-Related ...
“the widespread international consensus that human rights of-
fer protection against the impacts of dangerous climate change 
and that companies must respect human rights.” The Court ac-
cepted the existence of “some uncertainty about precise man-
ner in which dangerous climate change will manifest in the 
Netherlands” but held that this had no bearing on the prediction 
that climate change will lead to “serious and irreversible” con-
sequences for inhabitants of the Netherlands, even when fac-
toring in the taking of various adaptation measures. The Court 
recognised that these rights (Articles 2 and 8 ECHR and Articles 
6 and 17 of the ICCPR) could not be directly invoked by the 
plaintiffs but held that they could be relied on in the interpreta-
tion of unwritten standard of care. According to the Court, there 
is a “widespread international consensus that human rights of-
fer protection against impacts of dangerous climate change and 
that companies must respect human rights” – relying on Ur-
genda and on statements by the UN Human Rights Committee 
and the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights (Hosli, 2021, 
p. 98).
The Court drew heavily on the UN Guiding Principles as a 
further source by which to determine the standard of care owed 
by RDS to the plaintiff and described it as an “authoritative and 
internationally endorsed soft law instrument, which sets out 
the responsibilities of States and businesses relating to human 
rights.” It is true that, while not formally legally binding on cor-
porations, both the UN Guiding Principles and the MNE Guide-
lines apply to them regardless of their consent, in the sense 
that they express the expectations of states about responsible 
business conduct. The Court held that the responsibility of busi-
nesses to respect human rights, as reflected in the UN Guiding 
Principles, is “a global standard of expected conduct for all busi-
ness enterprises wherever they operate” existing “independent-
ly of States’ abilities and/or willingness to fulfil their own human 
rights obligations and does not diminish those obligations” and 
“over and above compliance with national laws and regulations 
protecting human rights”. The Court stated that “Respecting hu-
man rights is not a passive responsibility: it requires actions on 
the part of businesses,” which are expected to “prevent, limit 
and, where necessary, address” adverse human-rights impacts of 
their undertakings. These considerations reflect the concept of 

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DIGNITAS ■ Climate Change Law
due diligence under the Guiding Principles, which frame it as a 
process by which companies identify, prevent, mitigate, and ac-
count for how they address actual and potential adverse impacts 
on human rights (Hosli, 2021, pp. 199-200).
The Court stressed that the duty of business to respect human 
rights under the Guiding Principles is not limited to their own 
activities but extends to their operations, products or services by 
their business relationships, even if they have not contributed to 
those impacts.” According to the Court, this responsibility encom-
passes a company’s entire value chain, and, for this reason, RDS’s 
responsibility “extends to the CO
2
 emissions of these end-users 
(Scope 3) (Hosli, 2021, pp. 200-201). This means that “companies 
may be expected to identify and assess any actual or potential 
adverse human rights impacts with which they may be involved 
either through their own activities or as a result of their business 
relationships.” The Court held that RDS did know the adverse hu-
man rights impacts of its activities – it had known for a long time 
of the dangerous consequences of GHG emissions and knew 
how much GHG emissions it is responsible for emitting. There-
fore, RDS needed to take “appropriate action” to prevent and 
mitigate such adverse effects. Appropriate action includes taking 
steps to reduce GHG emissions generated from up-stream sup-
pliers and down-stream end users (Wu, 2023, p. 756). In other 
words, the obligation applies globally, even if the responsibility 
is at least notionally “national.”
The Court’s reliance on soft international norms and stand-
ards, together with the consensus of scientific bodies, to interpret 
a domestic law obligation that essentially requires private actors 
to achieve the goals set out by the Paris Agreement is striking. The 
strict position is that the Paris Agreement and other international 
standards applicable to state conduct are not as a matter of posi-
tive international law binding on private actors. The Dutch Court 
acknowledges this point but since it is also given the power to 
rely on international norms and principles when applying am-
biguous domestic law, the question of whether these norms are 
binding as a matter of international law is largely beside the point 
(Sanger, 2021, p. 427).

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DIGNITAS ■ The Fundamental Right to a Healthy Environment and Climate-Related ...
4.  Discussion: Human Rights-based 
Arguments to Environmental Protection 
and Climate Change
National and regional tribunals have clarified the meaning of 
the right to a healthy environment and addressed many of the 
objections levelled at human rights-based approaches to envi-
ronmental protection. The two analysed cases aptly illustrate that 
human rights arguments played a crucial role in the rulings. As 
noted above, recent jurisprudential evolutions have underlined 
the prominent role of rights-based discourses in the context of 
climate litigations. In recent years, more progressive litigation 
strategies have pushed governments to reassess their existing 
policies. At the domestic level, there is real scope for significant 
progress to be made to enhance and enforce the right to a healthy 
environment, elaborating and articulating substantive and pro-
cedural environmental rights, in the fight against dangerous cli-
mate change by litigation. In the context of climate change, this 
could mean that even with its shortcomings, that is, neither in-
ternational human rights law nor international environment law 
imposes direct obligations on the private sector to ensure human 
rights or address climate change,
29
 international human rights law 
and related mechanisms have provided fertile ground for civil 
society members to press their climate change-related claims and 
advance their efforts to hold states accountable. In the absence 
of binding international laws and mechanisms to enforce busi-
ness’s responsibility to respect human rights, the greening of hu-
man rights has helped to weave together two distinct branches 
of public international law in a manner that arguably strengthens 
protections and clarifies obligations on both ends. As such, the 
important work of articulating states’ international cooperation 
and extraterritorial human rights obligations, including their re-
sponsibilities to regulate fossil fuel companies that are causing 
global climate harm, will no doubt continue. In addition, the hu-
man rights-based approach has been used as a tactical lever by 
civil society and affected populations to urge states to prevent 
to the greatest extent possible the current and future negative 
29 
There are, however, some non-binding or soft law standards that states are beginning to reflect in 
their domestic laws. These standards are embodied in the Guiding Principles on Business and Hu-
man Rights which were unanimously adopted by the UN Human Rights Council in 2011.

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DIGNITAS ■ Climate Change Law
human rights impacts of climate change through stringent regu-
latory measures, and to push energy-intensive industrial actors 
to limit anthropogenic carbon emissions through fulfilling their 
climate mitigation obligations.
An environment of a particular quality is necessary to enjoy 
many of the rights recognised under human rights law. In a de-
graded or polluted environment, it becomes difficult to enjoy 
protected rights. The drafters of the UDHR never dreamed of 
including environmental rights in the list of rights that are funda-
mental to a decent human life. However, by the early years of the 
21
st
 century, it had become clear that environmental problems 
generate profound human rights impacts and that a sustainable 
environment is essential to the enjoyment of all human rights (Sri-
tharan, The Ethics of Climate Change, Climate Policy and Climate 
Justice, 2023, p. 171).
While no case can singlehandedly prevent the catastrophic ef-
fects of climate change predicted by scientists, there is growing 
interest among those bringing, funding, and analysing strategic 
climate litigation in which cases have the greatest prospects of 
achieving cut through in the policy and public debate, and ac-
celerating climate action (Peel & Markey-Towler, 2022, p. 1484). 
The international community has adopted a considerable array 
of international legal instruments and created specialised organs 
and agencies at global and regional levels to respond to identi-
fied problems in human rights and environmental protection, 
although often addressing the two topics in isolation from one 
another (Zhang, 2024, p. 34).
Soft law agreements, such as the 1972 Stockholm Declaration 
and the 1992 Rio Declaration, have also played an important role 
in the development of international environmental law and com-
monly evolve into hard law. Thus far, the international commu-
nity has regulated climate change action through multilateral en-
vironmental agreements and obligations established under the 
UNFCCC. Another significant treaty regarding climate change is 
the Paris Agreement. It uses a multitude of different, finely nu-
anced wording to describe the commitments of Parties. In legal 
literature, the classification ranges from binding rules to duties of 
care to soft law to strong normative expectations. By now, there 
have been quite a number of remarkable national court decisions 
that deal with the implementation of the Paris Agreement by state 

93
DIGNITAS ■ The Fundamental Right to a Healthy Environment and Climate-Related ...
Parties. The decisions have different subject-matters and use dif-
ferent legal approaches. One can distinguish litigation based on 
human rights, litigation to enforce statutory obligations to set or 
implement climate targets and litigation on the authorisation of 
individual projects (Rehbinder, 2023, pp. 139-150).
The ECHR and its protocols do not contain a fundamental 
right to the protection of a healthy environment. Nevertheless, 
the above two landmark cases from the Netherlands show that 
articles 2 and 8 ECHR encompass the state’s duty to take posi-
tive measures to prevent the danger of climate change, the judg-
ments do not mention the right to a healthy environment. This 
could be that both Dutch rulings were passed before the latest 
developments with respect to the legal recognition of the right 
to a healthy environment by the UNGA in the summer of 2022, 
declaring access to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment 
to be a universal human right.
The interdependence of the right to a healthy environment 
and all other fundamental rights has also been widely acknowl-
edged for years. Even the UNGA pointed it out in its brand-new 
resolution recognising the fundamental right to a clean, healthy 
and sustainable environment:
“Reaffirming…that all human rights are…interdependent and 
interrelated; Affirming the importance of a clean, healthy and 
sustainable environment for the enjoyment of all human rights…” 
(Emphasis added.)
In the fundamental right to a clean, healthy and sustainable 
environment as approved by the United Nations, climate has a 
place. The Resolution itself also addresses the triple environmen-
tal crisis, with a separate mention of global warming. It again rec-
ognises the central place of the enjoyment of a clean, healthy and 
sustainable environment for the effective enjoyment of all human 
rights. In the words of the UNGA Resolution 2022:
“Recognizing also that…the impact of climate change, the un-
sustainable management and use of natural resources, the pollu-
tion of air, land and water, the unsound management of chemi-
cals and waste, the resulting loss of biodiversity and the decline 
in services provided by ecosystems interfere with the enjoyment 
of a clean, healthy and sustainable environment and that environ-
mental damage has negative implications, both direct and indi-
rect, for the effective enjoyment of all human rights.”

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DIGNITAS ■ Climate Change Law
As a premise for the enjoyment of nearly all, if not all, other 
fundamental rights, the fundamental right to a healthy environ-
ment occupies a central place within the fundamental rights con-
stellation (Billiet, 2024, p. 99). Accordingly, one could conclude 
that just as human rights cannot exist without a clean, healthy 
and sustainable environment, sound environmental governance 
cannot be realised without legal protection and promotion of 
environmental human rights (Zhang, 2024, p. 37).
Scientists suggest humans are causing irreversible earth system 
transformations. These transformations are observable in terms of 
earth system tipping points that are triggered by human activities. 
Climate change has evidently become one of the most urgent ex-
istential planetary concerns. The rise of Anthropocene narrative 
and its associated terminologies, such as climate related tipping 
points and planetary boundaries, has provoked a major shift in 
how we understand human impacts on planet Earth. A planetary 
perspective therefore offers an opportunity to understand that 
everything is interconnected, that cause-and-effect relationships 
exist, and that what we do in our own backyards has a much more 
widely diffused impact than we thought possible. While these 
planetary challenges affect the entire biosphere in which humans 
are inextricably situated, the impacts on humans are not equally 
felt. By drawing attention to inequality, human rights provide an 
important lens through which to examine and analyse the differ-
ential impacts of climate change on specific groups of people in 
society (Kotze, 2022, pp. 1423-1444).
The 2022 IPCC report noted that climate change has adversely 
affected the physical and mental health of people globally and 
has a wide range of other economic and social impacts that are 
most severe for people with existing vulnerabilities. The report 
and wider literature on vulnerability to climate change demon-
strate that certain groups, such as those facing socioeconomic 
disadvantage, or disadvantage based on race or ethnicity, women, 
the elderly and very young, or people with disabilities, are being 
impacted most severely with inadequate support to survive and 
adapt effectively. This is a gap that needs far greater attention in 
developing mitigation, adaptation and climate disaster responses 
that are informed by human rights. Tackling these systemic in-
equalities and the linked drivers of climate change requires trans-
formation, which the 2022 IPCC report on climate adaptation de-

95
DIGNITAS ■ The Fundamental Right to a Healthy Environment and Climate-Related ...
fines as a change in the fundamental attributes of natural and hu-
man systems. Inequalities between different groups in societies 
must be addressed as they affect rights, including those related to 
health, housing, education, water, safe working conditions and an 
adequate standard of living. The IPCC sees such changes as nec-
essary in pursuing the goal of climate justice (Clark & Goldblatt, 
2023).
Climate change has been conceptualised, from a legal-schol-
arly perspective, as an environmental problem. Climate change 
affects the rights of people in vulnerable situations more severely 
and rapidly, like those in low-lying small island states or the least 
developed countries, the poor, the elderly and children. It is well 
established that climate change extensively affects the realisation 
and enjoyment of established human rights. Global warming 
could leave many without adequate food, water, and shelter, and 
threaten their economic and social rights. The adverse effects of 
climate change are already posing significant threats to human 
life, livelihoods and traditional cultures in developing countries 
with a limited capacity to adapt. Solving climate change requires 
international cooperation. States have the sovereign right to gov-
ern the affairs that occur within their territorial areas, including 
the authority to choose whether to control the emission of GHGs 
or to take any other action implicated by climate change. While 
states enjoy sovereign rights to exploit their own resources ac-
cording to their own environment and development policies 
within their jurisdiction, such sovereign rights are limited by re-
ciprocal obligations in relation to other equally sovereign states. 
States’ acts and omissions contributing to climate change can be 
characterised as a breach of human rights obligations. State re-
sponsibility arises automatically upon the occurrence of a breach 
of such obligations (Sritharan, 2023, pp. 18-25)
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR)
30
 has 
stressed, in its 2017 advisory opinion on the environment and hu-
man rights, that there is an undeniable relationship between the 
protection of the environment and human rights, including social 
and economic rights such as health, water, food and housing. 
The advisory opinion emphasized the vulnerability of various so-
30 
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights was established by the American Convention on Hu-
man Rights. The court is an autonomous judicial institution whose purpose is the application and 
interpretation of the American Convention on Human Rights. 

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DIGNITAS ■ Climate Change Law
cial groups to environmental damage and the obligation of states 
to protect these groups “based on the principle of equality and 
non-discrimination.” It also recognised that the right to a healthy 
environment “has both individual and also collective connota-
tions,” including the rights of future generations. Furthermore, 
in its 2017 advisory opinion, the IACtHR concluded that a state 
has jurisdiction over persons outside its territory whose rights 
are violated by activities over which such state exercises effective 
control. This interpretation of jurisdiction has significant implica-
tions for climate litigation in the Inter-American system, and may 
influence and embolden the International Court of Justice as it 
prepares a response to the UNGA’s request for an advisory opin-
ion on the obligations of states with respect to climate change
31
 
(Gonzalez, 2023, pp. 173-178).
The recent recognition of the right to a healthy environment 
is underpinned by an acknowledgement of the interdependence 
between humanity and its habitat and established on the recog-
nition that climate change and other human-driven environmen-
tal harms have direct and indirect negative implications for the 
enjoyment of all other human rights. The new right to a healthy 
environment now situates state obligations to provide social and 
economic rights as well as civil, political and cultural rights along-
side obligations to protect the environment, and the absence 
of these rights generates greater vulnerability to environmental 
harms. The emergence of the newly minted right to a healthy 
environment adds a few extra layers of protection to the existing 
environmental laws, which contain precise environmental stand-
ards and enforceable integration clauses (Clark & Goldblatt, 2023, 
pp. 67-69).
5. Conclusion
The recent resurgence of the right to a healthy environment 
has sparked new hope in times of unprecedented climate change, 
increasing biodiversity losses and persistent air, water, and soil 
pollution. The UNGA’s recognition of the right to a healthy en-
vironment is an exciting legal development that lays the ground-
work for further contestation of the larger systemic causes of 
31 
UN Doc A/77/L.58 (March 29, 2023). 

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DIGNITAS ■ The Fundamental Right to a Healthy Environment and Climate-Related ...
cotemporary socio-ecological crises. Although the basic param-
eters of the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable en-
vironment are clear, its application in specific situations will re-
quire careful analysis and appropriate measures. In the context 
of climate change and its already felt and future harms to human 
and non-human life, the right to a healthy environment highlights 
the need to reorient human rights to better account for our em-
bedded relationship with the environment. This interrelationship 
recognises the value that a human rights lens can bring to any 
regulatory responses to the environmental challenges faced by 
humanity in order to better address the complex inequalities and 
injustices generated by climate change.
Furthermore, its articulation with existing human rights of the 
first and second generations and the alignment with novel ap-
proaches will give rise to new promising legal and jurisprudential 
evolutions in the years to come. In times that are characterised 
by heatwaves, ecological degradation and droughts, it might be a 
sobering thought to conclude that even the recent international 
recognition of the human right to a healthy environment does not 
represent a silver bullet for existing environmental troubles. On 
its own, recognising the right to a healthy environment will do all 
too little to halt the headlong rush to an unsustainably warming 
planet and the unwillingness of governments to value the envi-
ronment for other than instrumental reasons. Nevertheless, with 
processes already well underway to obtain advisory opinions, an 
explosion of climate change litigation at the national level, and 
treaty bodies becoming increasingly aware of the indispensabil-
ity of factoring environmental considerations into their extensive 
interpretive functions, there will be no shortage of contexts in 
which the process of interpretation will take place.
Just as human rights cannot exist without a healthy envi-
ronment, a sound governance of the environment cannot be 
achieved without respect for human rights. Although this UN 
recognition of environmental human rights is more than moral 
posturing, some states have been hesitant to add new rights and 
tend to avoid legally binding treaties. There are several path-
ways ahead to strengthen the human right to a healthy environ-
ment in the international legal arena through embedding this 
newly recognised environmental human right into a global legal 
instrument. The impact of climate change on a range of human 

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DIGNITAS ■ Climate Change Law
rights is now well documented, it might now be the right time 
to supplement the structure of international human rights law 
with the adoption of a third international covenant codifying 
universally accepted environmental human rights in accordance 
with the twin international human rights covenants of 1966 (IC-
CPR and ICESCR). One could also foresee a parallel pathway 
of international environmental law, enshrining the right to a 
healthy environment in a founding global environmental treaty. 
Each multilateral environmental agreement is governed by its 
own set of rules and, as a result, the international environmental 
law system is criticized for its lack of unity. Establishing a single 
founding global environmental treaty that recognises and pro-
vides the human right to a healthy environment as a principle 
of environmental law with legal force would be considered a 
significant step forward.
As climate change litigation continues to expand around the 
globe, Urgenda provides important pointers for some of the in-
terpretative and evidentiary challenges that courts have to grap-
ple with in these cases. While the impact of the Urgenda case on 
climate cases in other countries is beginning to manifest itself, the 
Shell case stands out from other lawsuits against private corpora-
tions in that the plaintiffs’ claim implies that the defendant must 
adapt its global operations quite drastically to bring them into 
alignment with the scientific consensus that emissions must be 
reduced substantially and swiftly in order for the world to have a 
fair chance of achieving the Paris Agreement’s warming-limitation 
goals.
Climate litigation will be key in pushing state and non-state 
actors who demonstrably fall below accepted legal standards 
of conduct, whether based on human rights, corporate social 
responsibility, tort law duties of care, public trust, among other 
established principles, many of which are now being actively 
explored in jurisdictions around the world. Climate change 
has both immediate and long-term impacts, as is well-known, 
implicating a wide array of human rights such as the rights to 
life, culture, health, and property. Using the human right to a 
clean, healthy and sustainable environment as a framework as 
a framework for analyzing and responding to the threats posed 
by climate change has the potential to address both immediate 
and longer-term dangers. Moreover, using the human right to a 

99
DIGNITAS ■ The Fundamental Right to a Healthy Environment and Climate-Related ...
clean, healthy and sustainable environment as a framework as 
a framework for approaching the human rights aspects of cli-
mate change can counter the unfortunate and all-too-common 
tendency to ignore other serious environmental threats when 
thinking about climate change.
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