Youths, lawyers urge constitutional court to tackle carbon neutrality faster

Yoon Hyun-jeong from Youth 4 Climate Action speaks during the press conference, Monday, at Attic 99 in Jongno District, Seoul. Courtesy of Climate Media Hub

Three years into legal dispute, Youth 4 Climate Action recaps story so far

By Ko Dong-hwan

Three years after filing a complaint suit at the country's Constitutional Court against the Korean central government for their "inadequate" climate policies, Youth 4 Climate Action and their lawyers once again got together, Monday, to mark the ongoing initiative and recap key events.

Three youth activists from the group and as many lawyers representing them held a press conference in central Seoul, in which they stated that the government and the National Assembly haven't changed in how they are dealing with the climate crisis, which is an urgent matter.

"Their (the government) unchanging claim has been that they recognize the problem but solving it is unrealistic," the group said. "For those who don't share the value of time, the past three years may have meant nothing. But for us, that period meant hope and the reason for being patient, which prompted us to continue with this campaign."

Nineteen teenagers from across the country leveled accusations against the government and lawmakers on March 13, 2020. They claimed that the tardiness behind the authorities' overall response to the climate crisis was a violation of their "basic rights of living" by not preventing the threats that climate change poses to them. The legal proceedings, the first such action raised in East Asia back then, followed the moves of teens in Europe where climate conditions were becoming more extreme than in Korea.

Lucy Maxwell, co-director of Climate Litigation Network who sent her statement to the Monday conference, called the Korean case part of the growing movement of global communities turning to the courts to demand climate action from their respective governments so as to protect their rights based on the sound scientific findings currently available.

"The highest courts in the Netherlands, Ireland, France, Columbia, Nepal and Germany have all found in the last five years that climate action is a legal duty," Maxwell said. "We can see a growing consensus that states have human rights obligations to protect people from the harms posed by climate change because this is the greatest human rights crisis we've ever seen."

Members of Youth 4 Climate Action and their lawyers, following a press conference, rallied in front of Korea's Constitutional Court in Seoul. The poster reads "Three years into climate litigation at the Constitutional Court, it shouldn't be delayed any longer. Now is not the time for crisis but for judgment." Courtesy of Climate Media Hub

She said the ongoing case at the Korean constitutional court offers an important opportunity to clarify the government's obligations to protect constitutional rights in the face of the climate crisis.

"Affected communities and even courts in other countries are looking to the constitutional court of Korea and are waiting for its judgment," Maxwell said.

Dennis van Berkel, a lawyer from Urgenda Foundation, an NPO based in the Netherlands, said on Monday that climate litigation is important because it not only forces the governments to do more to protect their people against climate change: It also leads to a better political debate and politics in which people can trust that climate policies are based on facts and not empty promises.

"In 2019, the Dutch Supreme Court ruled that Dutch climate policies were insufficient and that the government needed to increase its emission reduction target for 2020," said Berkel in his statement sent to the conference. "The judgment led to closures of coal-fired power plants, an increase of renewable energy generation and helping people make their houses more energy-efficient. It also improved the political debate about climate change and led to more and better policies and laws being enacted for future climate policies. Dutch politicians then knew that if they didn't do their job, people could go back to the court and they would be held responsible for their insufficient action."

Youn Se-jong, an attorney from legal climate advocacy group, Plan 1.5 who co-led the conference, said that 185 legal experts in Korea and 31 abroad provided their signatures to Youth 4 Climate Action to support their legal initiative. According to the lawyer, the young activists aren't asking the government to make new policies but questioning whether the government's efforts so far have been enough to preserve their basic rights, which requires the court to answer that question.

"It's been the constitutional court's role to safeguard the citizens' rights, just as they have ruled over the country's conscripted soldiers who conscientiously objected to serving in the military or women who sought the right to legal abortions," Youn said. "These young activists are a minority group in the country's political environment and they don't have suffrage. The court must therefore protect them if their basic rights are being violated."

Last December, the National Human Rights Commission of Korea issued an official statement that the presidential office and the central government have obligations to safeguard the human rights of citizens from the climate crisis.