By Ju-min Park
SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea’s top court said on Thursday that its climate change law fails to protect basic human rights and lacks targets to protect future generations, a landmark ruling after activists accused the government of failing to effectively combat climate change.
About 200 plaintiffs, including young climate activists and even some toddlers, have filed petitions with the Constitutional Court since 2020, arguing that their government is violating the human rights of its citizens by not doing enough to combat climate change.
The court ordered the legislature to revise the carbon neutrality law by the end of February 2026. It recognized that the emissions targets of the existing law were incompatible with the constitution because they violated the duty to protect fundamental rights and did not protect future generations from a climate crisis.
Climate change groups said it was the first ruling by a supreme court in Asia on a government’s climate actions and could set a precedent in a region where similar lawsuits have already been filed in Taiwan and Japan.
In April, Europe’s highest human rights court ruled that the Swiss government had violated the rights of its citizens by not doing enough to combat climate change.
The Korean court’s verdict was greeted with cheers, tears and applause by plaintiffs, activists and lawyers, who chanted slogans such as “The verdict is not the end, but the beginning.”
“I hope that today’s decision will lead to a major change so that children no longer have to file this kind of constitutional complaint,” said 12-year-old Han Je-ah, one of the plaintiffs.
“The climate crisis has a huge impact on our lives and there is no time to lose,” she told reporters after the verdict.
Kim Young-hee, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, called the ruling “an important decision for reducing greenhouse gases throughout society.”
The court said South Korea’s carbon neutrality law, which came into force in 2010 and was later revised to set emissions targets by 2030 and a goal of carbon neutrality by 2050, “did not provide quantitative values” for the reduction targets between 2031 and 2049.
“In the absence of a mechanism that can effectively ensure gradual and continuous reductions by 2050, reduction targets are set that would shift an excessive burden to the future,” the court said in its statement.
The Environment Ministry said in a statement that it respects the ruling and will take follow-up measures.
Koh Moon-hyun, a law professor at Soongsil University, told Reuters the ruling could potentially lead to changes in other countries as well.
“The court must have looked at the rulings in Europe and changed its stance,” he said. “It has given South Korea a chance to shed its nickname as a climate villain.”
Scientists say a global temperature rise of more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average will have catastrophic and irreversible effects on the planet, from melting ice sheets to the collapse of ocean currents.
South Korea aims to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, but data shows it remains the second-biggest coal polluter among G20 countries after Australia and is slow to adopt renewable energy.
Last year, the government revised its targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the industrial sector by 2030 downward, but maintained its national goal of reducing emissions by 40 percent compared to 2018 levels.
This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without any modifications.