A group of activists are fighting for the right to scrutinise Russia’s climate policies, and in particular its enormous methane emissions, in court.
According to available reports, Russia’s constitutional court is considering a claim brought by 18 individuals and the NGO Ecodefense that insufficient action by the Russian state to cut national greenhouse gas emissions is violating their rights to life, health and a healthy environment.
Another organisation that had planned to join the case, Moscow Helsinki, was closed down last year by a different Russian court. It was the country’s oldest human rights group. The claimants previously asked Russia’s supreme court to examine national climate policy, but it refused to take on the case. They then took a fresh claim to the constitutional court, which is responsible for upholding the country’s constitution. The court has decided some environmental cases in the past, including state liability for the Chornobyl nuclear disaster, but it has not yet dealt with climate breakdown.
“We are insisting in this case that the current climate policy of Russia is too weak and can’t protect us against the most catastrophic consequences of climate change,” said Vladimir Slivyak from Ecodefense.
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One of those bringing the case is Arshak Makichyan, who has previously been jailed in Russia after taking part in climate protests and who now lives in Germany. He said the lawsuit was about the contradiction between Russia’s climate policy and its constitution.
Russia is one of the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitters. The government has set a target to achieve net zero by 2060 but has done little to achieve this, leading Climate Action Tracker (CAT) to call its efforts “critically insufficient”.
Russia’s energy strategy focuses almost exclusively on extracting, consuming and exporting fossil fuels, and its climate plans rely heavily on national forests taking up twice as much carbon as they do today. “No information substantiates such an enormous increase of carbon take-up,” says CAT. “It also doesn’t appear to address the impact of enormous wildfires in its Siberian forests in recent years.”
Russia is close to the host of the next climate talks, Azerbaijan, which has defended investment in oil and gas.
The claimants say Russia’s climate plans are scientifically unsubstantiated and ineffective in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and they argue the plans should be significantly tightened to be in line with the Paris agreement.
Part of the claim focuses on Russia’s role as the world’s biggest source of methane from fossil fuel extraction. Russian gas infrastructure is notoriously leaky and is responsible for a significant proportion of super-emitting leaks. Makichyan noted that Russia had no targets at all for reducing methane emissions.
Story was adapted from the Guardian.
