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Yoon Hyeonjeong, an activist with Youth 4 Climate Action, looks on during an interview with Reuters in Seoul, South Korea, August 28, 2024. | Photo Credit: Reuters
Yun Hyeonjeong, a 19-year-old South Korean activist, says the fate of her years-long fight for more action to tackle climate change depends on a landmark ruling by the country’s top court on Thursday.
Yoon is among nearly 200 litigants, including young environmentalists like him and even infants, who have filed petitions with the Constitutional Court since 2020 arguing that the government is violating the human rights of its citizens by failing to effectively tackle climate change.
Climate advocacy groups say it would be the first high court ruling on a government’s climate action in Asia, potentially setting a precedent in the region where similar lawsuits have been filed in Taiwan and Japan. In April, Europe’s top human rights court ruled that the Swiss government had violated the rights of its citizens by failing to take sufficient steps to tackle climate change.
“Street picketing, policy proposals, these campaigns were not enough to bring about real change,” said Yoon. He hopes the court’s ruling will help remove bureaucratic barriers to climate policy.
Government lawyers say officials are doing everything possible to cut carbon emissions.
Environment Minister Han Wha-jin said in May that the government’s emissions reduction targets do not violate people’s rights, though the constitutional petition has provided a public forum for raising awareness about the severity of the climate crisis.
In 2019, Yoon was in her third year of middle school when she watched a documentary on the climate crisis, which she said shocked her and inspired her to take action.
Despite not being particularly sociable, he decided to follow in the footsteps of Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, who has inspired a global youth movement demanding tough action against climate change.
Yoon wrote slogans with colored pencils to picket schools, telling her elders to stop destroying the planet. She later dropped out of high-school and left her hometown to focus on the climate movement in the capital, Seoul.
South Korea’s Constitutional Court does not award compensation, or order law enforcement measures, but it can declare existing laws unconstitutional, and request parliament to amend them.
Germany’s constitutional court ruled in 2021 that the country must update its climate law to set out how it will bring carbon emissions to near-zero by 2050.
Scientists say a global temperature rise of more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above the pre-industrial average would have devastating and irreversible effects on the planet, including melting ice sheets and disrupting ocean currents.
South Korea is striving to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, but data shows it remains the second-biggest coal polluter among G20 nations after Australia due to its slow adoption of renewable energy.
The country last year revised its 2030 targets for greenhouse gas reductions in the industrial sector but maintained its national goal of cutting emissions by 40% compared to 2018 levels.
Calling to end the use of fossil fuels, Yun said floods and rising temperatures caused by climate change are having an immediate impact on people’s lives.
“We already have the means to reduce carbon emissions. That means stopping the use of fossil fuels,” he said.
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