When states don't behave - BBC Learning English

Can governments be forced to take the tough steps

needed to save the environment?

This episode will show you how

even lawmakers aren't bigger than the law.

What happens when a country breaks an agreement over the environment?

Can the law help?

And the important case that could change the way

governments behave around the world...

But first, international laws

are based on agreements between countries,

but what happens when an influential country doesn't agree?

The Amazon rainforest, in Brazil:

the millions of trees maintain the atmosphere

for all of us, all around the world.

But Jair Bolsonaro, elected president of Brazil in 2018,

had a different view.

His government has put the needs of the economy ahead.

While he's been in power, much more of the forest has been cut down.

So, what can the international community do?

A similar story in North America:

2017 and Donald Trump announces

the US was leaving the Paris Agreement,

an agreement by 191 countries to cut their emissions.

America rejoined the agreement after Joe Biden became president.

However, when countries break agreements like this,

what can international law do?

What power does something like the Paris Agreement

have to protect our world?

What happens if a country breaks it?

Lydia Omuko-Jung, from the Climate Change Litigation Initiative

and the University of Graz, explained:

So, the Paris Agreement takes a soft law approach

to its compliance mechanism, so countries will not be punished,

or they will not be some sanctions for not being able to comply

with the binding obligations of the Paris Agreement.

So, what happens is that where parties cannot comply,

or where parties have not complied, then it's more of a discussion –

a dialogue: in the compliance committee, it's a dialogue

where they discuss why have... hasn't the country been able to comply

and how can they comply, and then recommendations are made

based on these discussions.

The Paris Agreement follows a soft law approach.

Countries aren't punished for breaking it;

instead, discussions happen about how to fix the problem.

So, could international law stop something

like the Brazilian rainforests being cut down?

Brazil has a right to explore their resources,

the national resources within their country.

It only becomes problematic when these activities

within their territory damage the environment of other states.

But then, in terms... in terms of cutting down forests,

we find that it's quite difficult to identify

what you'd call transboundary environmental effects...

yeah, some environmental effects in another country

because of Brazil's exploitation of its own forests.

So, that really is quite a challenge

for the international community to come in.

Brazil can do what it wants to its own forests.

You would need to prove an environmental impact in another country,

called a transboundary effect, to stop this – why?

Other states can only come in if there are some legally binding obligations

that is created by some treaty which mandates,

for instance, states to protect forests.

As you're speaking at the moment, we do not have, like,

a global legally binding instrument

that creates this state obligation to protect forests,

which makes it difficult for the international community to get in.

Countries can't interfere because we don't have laws

that create internationally protected places.

She explained why she thought the Paris Agreement

wasn't good enough to protect Brazil's forests.

If you look at the Paris Agreement,

it recognises the importance of forests

in mitigating greenhouse gas emissions,

but it just provides that parties should take action

to conserve and enhance forests.

So, what we see from this kind of drafting,

or from this kind of provision, is that it doesn't create

a direct responsibility on states,

or even a binding actual obligation,

because it uses word 'should': 'parties should take action'

rather than 'parties shall take action'

to conserve and enhance the environment.

The Paris Agreement only says

countries 'should' take action to protect forests,

not 'shall', which means they don't have to do anything.

So, international laws can't force countries to protect the climate,

but could all that be changing?

One important case might give the Paris Agreement real strength...

Politicians talk a lot about their plans to save the environment.

What if the law made them do something?

In 2015, around 900 people

took the Dutch government to court to do just that.

The court ruled that the state had a responsibility

to act to deal with climate change.

The Dutch government cut its coal-fired power stations by 75%

and spent €3 billion on other steps to cut emissions.

Dennis van Berkel, one of the Urgenda Foundation's lawyers,

said, 'The ruling will encourage others to appeal to human rights,

when it comes to climate change threats.'

So, could you use this case in your own country?

And how did the law make the Dutch government change its behaviour?

Let's hear from Dennis van Berkel

about the laws used in the Urgenda case.

We used three types of law in our case.

The first bit of law was tort law,

which tells us what is unlawful behaviour

and which is the law to hold state or private entity liable.

But, to inform what is lawful and unlawful behaviour

on the side of the state, we also looked at human rights law,

particularly the European Convention on Human Rights.

And we also looked at international law: for instance, the Paris Agreement,

which tells us that countries need to hold their emissions to well below 2°

and to aim to hold temperature increase to below one and a half degrees.

The lawyers working on this case used a variety of laws:

tort, human rights and international.

So, what did the court ruling actually say?

First of all, the... the judgement said that climate change

is an incredibly big threat and is actually threatening

our right to life and our right to private life,

and that the state therefore has a duty

to protect us against climate change.

But moreover, the judgement said that

every country has its own responsibility

to do its share in solving the problem:

it needs to do its fair share.

And then the... the judgement looked at what precisely is this fair share.

The ruling said that climate change is a big threat

and every country is responsible for protecting its people.

But can a ruling in the Netherlands have an international impact?

So, there have been about 100 cases around the world by now,

in which governments have been targeted

for not taking enough measures against climate change,

for instance... for giving permission to open new airfields

or to open new coal-fire power plants,

but also there's been a wave of litigation against corporations,

and very recently there was actually a court in the Netherlands

that even concluded that a multinational oil company,

such as Shell, has a legal duty to also reduce its emissions:

not only its own emissions, but even the emissions of its consumers.

Many cases around the world have followed this one,

targeting governments and corporations to fight climate change.

Dennis said this was a really important case.

We can go to the streets, but we can also go to the courts

and demand answers – why this problem

has not been dealt with sufficiently.

And that's one of the big things that these cases show.

And as long as countries do not step up,

we will see more and more people going to courts

demanding that both their governments

and the corporations justify themselves

with regards to what they're doing about climate change.

If governments don't take action to deal with climate change,

people can use the power of the law to force positive change.

We've seen how current laws, like the Paris Agreement,

are hard to enforce, despite the good intentions behind them.

But, thanks to smart and dedicated lawyers,

countries may soon have to take action

to protect our environment for the future.