The Belgian Climate Case - Navigating the Tensions Between Climate Justice and Separation of Powers

Abstract

On November 30, the Brussels Court of Appeal rendered a landmark decision in the climate case brought by “Klimaatzaak” (“climate case” in Dutch) against Belgian public authorities (the federal and the three regional governments). In this decision, the court found the federal authority and the Brussels and Flemish regions’ climate action to be in violation of Articles 2 and 8 of the ECHR and of their duty of care, and imposed a minimal GHG reduction target to be reached by Belgian authorities for the future. In their blogpost, Alice Briegleb and Antoine De Spiegeleir provide a clear overview of the case, exploring its previous stages and insisting on the continuing failures of the Belgian climate governance and its complex federal structure. We focus on our part on how the decision makes it clear that the climate justice movement is now confronted with the tension between the legally required and the ethically desirable parameters of climate effort distribution.

Keywords

• Climate Constitutionalism
• Climate Crisis
• Klimaatzaak
• Klimakatastrophe
• climate change litigation
• climate litigation