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| Mountain guide and farmer Saul Luciano Lliuya is taking a German energy giant to court over the melting of the Churup Glassier which is threatening his home. Picture: AFP/Cris Bouroncle |
OVER the next few weeks a case will play out that will have executives all over the world very nervous.
Peruvian farmer Saul Luciano Lliuya is suing German energy giant RWE, the self-described "biggest single emitter of CO2" in Europe, for $29,000 over what he claims the company is doing to his hometown.
Lliuya lives near the Andean city of Huaraz, under constant danger from a lake that threatens to flood the town and his house and farm along with it. He has watched the lake grow more than 30 times in volume in the last 40 years as the glacier that feeds it melts, and now wants enough money to engineer a solution.
So far, a letter of complaint to the company has gone unanswered and lawyers claim there is no legal basis for his case. But the farmer, backed by NGO Germanwatch is undeterred, and if successful, the unprecedented case could be the tip of the iceberg.
"It's sometimes said you can't do this stuff legally and the reality is that the barriers are political, not legal," said West Coast Environmental Law Staff Counsel, Andrew Gage.
The Canadian lawyer released a report this week outlining the legal basis for which individuals and groups who have suffered the effects of climate change could sue the companies deemed to have caused them. While it's very much an "emerging conversation", he said it's not as much of a legal leap as one might think.
"The way I look at it is you can't have a business model where you know you are causing billions of dollars of harm each year and not have a conversation about 'well hang on what's your responsibility there?' Sooner or later that conversation comes back to you," he said.
Taking Climate Justice Into Our Own Hands, is written in conjunction with the University of the South Pacific's environmental law lecturer Margaretha Wewerinke and claims that a Climate Compensation Act adopted around the world could open the door for people to sue companies like ExxonMobil, BP and BHP Billiton based on the concept of climate change being a 'nuisance'.
It cuts to the heart of a key issue in the climate debate: How to ensure those who suffer the worst effects are compensated for a problem they didn't create?
"There clearly would be a risk that companies in Australia and in many countries around the world need to take into account," Mr Gage said.
"The amount of damages we're talking about being caused by climate change is huge. Some estimates put it currently at about $700 billion a year worldwide and rising and certainly there are particularly storm events or incidents that can cost billions of dollars in one fell swoop."
However the idea is difficult and slippery to define, with plenty of questions over who is responsible for how much global warming, and how climate-change induced weather events differ from weather events that would have happened anyway.
Despite the difficulty, the idea is gaining momentum in the legal space. Earlier this month the Human Rights Commission of the Philippines announced it would investigate whether fossil fuel companies could be held responsible for climate change following a petition brought to them by Greenpeace over the role of the "carbon majors" in global warming. Australian company BHP Billiton ranks number 19 in a list of major emitters topped by Chevron, ExxonMobil and Saudi Aramco, according to the report.
Greenpeace international executive director Kumi Naidoo said he hoped the decision would inspire other human rights commissions to take part, saying: "If I were a CEO of a fossil fuel company, I would be running scared."
BHP Billiton would not provide comment on the issue. However the company said it strongly supports efforts to reach the two degree global goal including putting a price on carbon. Their recent portfolio analysis into climate change said the company is working with governments and other groups to reduce emissions and provide energy for a developing world.
For Mr Gage, questions around implementation are no hurdle for a nation that he says cannot be left alone.
"If you've got a company that is knowing that its product is directly contributing on a very significant scale to causing billions of dollars of harm and death and displacing people from their lands and they're making billions of dollars in profit doing that, I think there is a very live question about whether they can just say 'well we don't bear any responsibility."
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