A year after a youth climate case billed as a “David and Goliath” matchup was dismissed, four challengers from the case are joining efforts to bring a new lawsuit against the government of Portugal.
The four were challengers in Duarte Agostinho and Others v. Portugal and 32 Other States, which alleged that Portugal’s government — and those of 31 other countries — had failed to do enough to protect them from the effects of climate-fueled heat waves, storms and droughts.
The case was one of three that went before the European Court of Human Rights in 2023 when it considered for the first time whether governments should act faster on climate change. In a landmark ruling on April 9, 2024, the court found that the Swiss government was violating the rights of a group of senior women by failing to seriously address the dangers of rising temperatures.
But it found that the youth-led lawsuit was not “admissible” — in part because the countries other than Portugal did not have “extraterritorial obligations” to the young people. It also found that the plaintiffs in Duarte Agostinho didn’t exhaust all domestic legal remedies because they brought their case to the human rights court, rather than a national court first.
