The Campaign
Dear reader,
This campaign seeks to hold the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)—the body of the United Nations responsible for responding to climate change and the main organiser of the annual Conference of the Parties—accountable for its inadequate progress in addressing the world’s increasingly worsening climate crisis.
The backdrop of this campaign is a rigorous investigation we conducted into the UNFCCC and its actions over the past 17 years in the realm of agriculture. We scrutinised various initiatives aimed at combating climate change and assessed their progress. Our findings, published in the journal Outlook on Agriculture, reveal a distressing pattern: despite ambitious rhetoric and grand promises, tangible progress remains elusive. Until today, it is impossible to hold the UNFCCC legally accountable for its negligence.
However, in recent landmark rulings, the European Court of Human Rights has begun holding nations accountable for their insufficient climate actions. For instance, an interest group representing elderly women, Swiss Senior Women for Climate Protection, won a case against Switzerland in the European courts. This ruling highlighted the profound impacts of governmental inaction on vulnerable populations, particularly concerning environmental and health effects due to climate change. This legal precedence inspires our initiative to challenge the very entities responsible for spearheading global climate efforts.
It is urgent to address the stark reality that the UNFCCC, the supranational body entrusted with driving comprehensive climate action, has fallen short of its mandate. While countries can be sued for their inaction, the UNFCCC itself remains beyond direct legal accountability. This gap in accountability necessitates immediate attention to ensure that promises translate into measurable progress.
As highlighted by UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell at COP28, "Governments must make bold strides forward... COP28 must be a clear turning point. Governments must not only agree on what stronger climate actions will be taken but also start showing exactly how to deliver them." However, despite these calls for ambitious action, COP28 fell short of expectations. The final agreement's vague commitments and continued allowances for fossil fuel subsidies exemplify the persistent gap between pledges and actions, leaving critical climate goals unmet.
This campaign seeks to reintroduce accountability where there now is none, in the final hope that accountability will evolve into action before it is too late.
Why us?
Dr. Dhanush Dinesh spent over a decade working within the international system. During that time, he grew increasingly frustrated with a bureaucratic system unaccountable for its role in fostering climate action.
In later years, Dr. Dinesh and colleagues conducted an academic investigation into the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the entity within the United Nations responsible for the annual Conference of Parties (COPS).
Using food systems as a lens – an area of climate change responsible for more than one third of global emissions – Dr. Dinesh et al. investigated the progress of the last 17 years of Presidency-led initiatives, to be understood as climate promises made by hosting countries.
To those outside of climate diplomacy, the results should be alarming. It turns out that each climate initiative by countries in the last two decades has no progress to report. For those familiar with climate diplomacy, however, the results were not at all surprising.
In this way, Dr. Dinesh and colleagues stand behind the most recent academic investigation of how the UNFCCC’s climate diplomacy, and therefore countries’ efforts to reduce emissions, is failing.
Why now?
In 2021, in the legal case Milieudefensive v Shell, the Dutch Court ordered Royal Dutch Shell – a petroleum conglomerate – to reduce its carbon emissions by 45% by 2030 compared to 2019 levels. The landmark ruling marked the beginning of increased governmental involvement in ensuring just climate action.
In a turn of events, 2024 brought four major cases against governments in the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Portugal, and France for their failure to protect their citizens from the detrimental effects of climate change. In the Swizz case, over 2.000 women successfully argued that Switzerland was in breach of Article 8 (“the right to private and family life”) and Article 6 (“the right to a fair trial”). This is the first time that a state’s failure to protect individuals’ human rights within the realm of climate change has been successfully challenged through legal frameworks. The landmark ruling is likely to act as an impetus for other human rights claims.
These developments signal a greater movement in which national and supranational entities, previously shielded from legal repercussions from climate inaction, are held liable. Yet, one step is missing.
For while it is an important milestone that national governments are held accountable for their negligence, it is not them who play the main character in climate bureaucracy. While only a handful of countries are beginning to suffer the consequences of this breach, each country ultimately works within the frameworks set by the UNFCCC.
Countries merely serve as stepping stones to their climate overseer, the guardian supranational entity tasked with organizing humanity’s response to a changing climate. This legal movement sets the necessary precedence for pursuing legal action against the root of the problem, the UNFCCC itself.
Why it's urgent?
At the time of writing, a few notable reports explain the state of climate change. In 2022, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) released a report stating that current pledges by countries since the 26th annual Conference of Parties will take less than one percent off the projected 2030 greenhouse gas emissions, 45 times less than is needed to reach the 1.5° goal.
In 2023, the global average near-surface temperature was 1.45° above the pre-industrial baseline, according to the World Meteorological Organization's report that year. It is now estimated that temperatures can rise as high as 1.9° above this baseline in the next five years. In other words, the Paris Agreement's goal is fractions of a number away from exceeded.
If all promises made since the Paris Agreement were fulfilled, humanity may succeed in preventing a 3.0° temperature increase this century. However, given the track record and the UNFCCC's inability to ensure measurable emission-reducing actions, hope is currently unwarranted.
In the years to come, it is difficult to comprehend the sheer scale of climate-induced consequences humanity will endure. As the sole entity tasked with rallying humanity against climate change, the institution has wasted its monopoly.
For failing to uphold its mandate in the 30 years since its inception, thereby endangering the world's population, the UNFCCC must be taken to court to stand trial for its failure to lower human-caused emissions.
