This Tuesday is the D-day of the weather in Spain. The Supreme Court must rule on the lawsuit filed by several environmental organizations demanding a greater ambition in the cut in emissions (from 23% to 55% in 2030).. The climate trial is an unprecedented litigation in our country, which could align itself with other nations around us whose courts have already agreed with the demands of civil society in the face of the passivity of governments.
The trend was marked by the Netherlands in 2019, with the ruling in favor of the complaint filed by the Urgenda Foundation, which forced the review of climate plans. Two years later, the German Constitutional Court described the objectives of the Climate Protection Act as “insufficient” and forced an upward revision.
Something similar happened that same year in France, in the so-called case of the century, in which the Administrative Court of Paris recognized the responsibility of the State in the “ecological damage” caused by the climate crisis.. In the United Kingdom, meanwhile, the Supreme Court forced the review of the zero emissions strategy in 2050 in 2022, considering that the Government has not provided sufficient data to evaluate it.
The chain reaction was not long in coming, with climate lawsuits in countries as diverse as New Zealand or Pakistan, which last year suffered the worst floods in its history. According to UN estimates, there are already more than 5,000 climate disputes underway in 38 countries.
In Spain, the initiative started in 2020 from Greenpeace, Ecologistas en Acción and Oxfam Intermon (later Fridays for Future, Greta Thunberg's organization, and the Coordinator of Organizations for Development joined). The plaintiffs denounced the lack of ambition of the National Integrated Energy and Climate Plan (PNIEC), which contemplated a reduction in emissions of 23% compared to 1990 at the end of this decade.

Urgenda director Marjan Minnesma hugs members of her legal team. PA

The five environmental associations ask to raise the bar for the reduction of emissions to 55%, based on the latest reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The plaintiffs stress that the goal set at the time by the Government does not correspond to the commitment to “carry forward efforts” to keep the global increase in global temperature below 1.5 ºC, set by the 2015 Paris Agreement. .
“An estimated sentence in the climate trial will not only be a judicial success in the fight against climate change,” warns Jaime Doreste, lawyer for the plaintiff organizations. “An enormous milestone can also be set in the obligations of the public powers to safeguard the natural heritage and environmental quality, and the duty of care and guarantee of human rights.”
Lorena Ruiz-Huerta, another lawyer who represents the organizations, assures that the lawsuit is based on “solid legal arguments”, including the doctrine of the European Court of Human Rights and European jurisprudence with cases in the Netherlands, Germany and France.
The demand is also supported by “the best scientific evidence”, from the IPCC reports, to the studies on the “emissions gap” of the UN Environmental Program or the estimates of the State Meteorological Agency.. The recent impacts of the climate crisis in Spain (drought, heat waves, floods) also appear as evidence of the need for an urgent reduction in CO2 emissions.
In the middle of the countdown to the Supreme Court ruling, the so-called Scientific Manifesto for the Climate Emergency was made public, calling for “forceful actions” and recalling that the political measures agreed so far -at a European and international level- would mean an increase in temperatures of 3.2 degrees at the end of the century, with catastrophic consequences.