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Dear Friends,

We’re writing to share exciting news: this morning, Our Children’s Trust, alongside fellow global climate and human rights organizations like Oxfam and the Centre for Child Law at the University of Pretoria, provided ([link removed]) the highest Court in Europe - the European Court of Human Rights - with the best available scientific evidence as the Court prepares to hear its first ever climate cases.

The interventions we submitted today provide the Court’s Grand Chamber - the highest chamber in the Court - with critical scientific evidence on the intersection between the climate crisis and violations of human rights as the Court prepares to hear its first three climate cases: Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and Others v. Switzerland, Duarte Agostinho and Others v. Portugal and Others, and Carême v. France.

With your support, Our Children’s Trust is working to ensure that courts around the world accurately weigh the devastating impacts of the climate crisis on human rights and children’s rights - and rely on the best available science to do so!
Courtroom of the European Court of Human Rights (Photo by Adrian Grycuk / Wikipedia ([link removed]) )
What Do These Interventions Say?
The brief we submitted today with our global partners provides the European Court of Human Rights with crucial evidence of the most rigorous scientific standards for how governments must measure their efforts to address the climate crisis. The brief educates the Court on the unbending laws of physics and how human rights law must be tied to that science if we want to protect our children.

Specifically, the intervention brief we filed today explains how:
* The current level of planetary heating, ~1.1°C–1.3°C, is unsafe for individuals and communities around the globe, violating their human rights to life and to private and family life;
* The temperature targets set forth in the 2015 Paris Agreement aiming to limit global heating to 1.5°C–2.0°C above pre-industrial temperatures are wholly unprotective of human rights and are an inadequate measure of whether the world is successfully mitigating the climate crisis;
* The accurate and meaningful scientific standard for climate mitigation must be aimed at stabilizing the Earth Energy Imbalance by limiting the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO[2]) in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million (ppm); and
* Pathways for governments to reduce atmospheric CO[2] to 350 ppm as soon as possible are currently available, feasible, and beneficial to implement.

What Does It Mean to Be an Intervenor?
Our Children’s Trust and our fellow intervenors requested permission from the European Court of Human Rights to submit briefs in these three cases because, while we are not a party in the lawsuits (meaning we are not the plaintiffs, the defendants, or attorneys for either group), the outcomes of these climate cases will have a profound impact on both the development of the law globally and the young people we support.

In short, we submitted these briefs because these three climate lawsuits - much like our own youth-led litigation in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and other countries around the world - will have an impact on children everywhere. And as the world’s only law firm exclusively dedicated to representing young people who are being harmed by the climate crisis, we have a vested interest in ensuring that the European Court of Human Rights weighs and considers the best available scientific evidence as they decide these cases.
“It is critical that the Court rely on the expertise of climate scientists, rather than on political compromises such as the temperature targets specified in the Paris Agreement, as it considers the human rights violations of the climate crisis for the first time. The scientific evidence submitted through our interventions today will provide the Court with a solid evidential basis to find that a climate system capable of protecting human life, health, and well-being is fundamental to uphold the universal rights to life, privacy, family, and home promised by the European Convention on Human Rights.”
- Kelly Matheson, Deputy Director of Global Climate Litigation, Our Children’s Trust.
It is an honor for Our Children’s Trust to be granted Intervenor status to serve as an expert advisor to the European Court of Human Rights, providing it with the best available climate science and advising the Court on how this science is applicable to the law and vital to understand for the sake of our world’s children.

The Court granted not just one of our requests (which we should note is not easy to secure and is frequently not granted!), but all three.

And when the Court’s Grand Chamber holds hearings in these three climate lawsuits on March 29, 2023 in Strasbourg, France, we will be watching closely, knowing that the plaintiffs in these cases - and our own plaintiffs around the world - will benefit from the Court having had access to the best available science on how the climate crisis directly impacts and violates human rights.

Toward climate justice in Europe and the protection of human rights for all,

The Team at Our Children’s Trust

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