An activist from Youth 4 Climate Action Yoon Hyeonjeong looks on during an interview with Reuters in Seoul, South Korea, August 28, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Yoon Hyeonjeong, a 19-year-old South Korean activist, says the fate of her years-long fight for more action to tackle climate change hinges on what could be a landmark ruling by the country’s top court on Thursday.

Yoon is among about 200 plaintiffs, including young environmentalists like herself and even infants, in petitions filed to the Constitutional Court since 2020, which argue the government is violating its citizens’ human rights by not effectively tackling climate change.

Climate advocacy groups say it will be the first high court ruling on a government’s climate action in Asia, potentially setting a precedent in a region where similar lawsuits have been filed in Taiwan and Japan. In April, Europe’s top human rights court ruled the Swiss government had violated the rights of its citizens by failing to do enough to combat climate change.

“Picketing on streets, policy proposals, these campaigns weren’t enough to bring about real changes,” said Yoon, who is hoping the court ruling will help tear down bureaucratic hurdles on climate policy.

Lawyers for the government say authorities are doing everything possible to cut carbon emissions.

Han Wha-jin, who was environment minister, said in May the government’s emission reduction targets did not infringe on people’s rights, though the constitutional petition provided a public forum about the severity of the climate crisis.

In 2019, Yoon was in her third year of middle school when she watched a climate crisis documentary that she said shocked her into action.

Despite not being particularly outgoing, she decided to try and follow in the footsteps of the likes of Greta Thunberg, a Swedish climate activist who has inspired a global youth movement demanding stronger action against climate change.

Yoon wrote slogans with crayons to picket at schools, telling her elders to stop destroying the planet. She later dropped out of high-school and left her hometown to focus on the climate movement in the capital Seoul.

South Korea’s constitutional court does not award damages or order law enforcement measures but can rule existing laws are unconstitutional and request parliament to revise them.

Germany‘s constitutional court ruled in 2021 the country must update its climate law to set out how it will bring carbon emissions down to almost zero by 2050.

Scientists say a global temperature rise beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above the preindustrial average will trigger catastrophic and irreversible impact on the planet, from melting ice sheets to the collapse of ocean currents.

South Korea is seeking to reach carbon neutrality by 2050, but remains the second-highest coal polluter among G20 countries after Australia, data showed, with slow adoption of renewables.

The country last year revised down its 2030 targets for greenhouse gas reductions in the industrial sector but kept its national goal of cutting emissions by 40% of 2018 levels.

Calling for an end to the use of fossil fuel, Yoon said flooding and rising temperatures caused by climate change were having immediate effects on people’s lives.

“We already have tools to cut carbon emissions. That is, stop using fossil fuels,” she said.

An image grab from a video released by the Just Stop Oil climate campaign group shows activists spraying an orange substance at Stonehenge in Wiltshire, southwest England, on June 19, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Climate activists of the ‘Just Stop Oil’ group sprayed orange powder on to the stones of Stonehenge, the prehistoric rock monument in Wiltshire, England, on Wednesday. The attack happened a day before the summer solstice (June 20) when crowds gather at the site. The monument, thought to have been built in several stages between 3000 BCE and 1500 BCE, was likely significant, historically, as a gathering place for rituals during the summer and winter solstices, as the position of the stones aligns in specific ways with the sun’s trajectory on these days.

Two people have been arrested in connection with the incident, the police said.

In a statement the group said two of its members had “decorated” Stongehenge to demand an end to oil and gas burning and extraction by 2030.

“Standing inert for generations works well for stones – not climate policy,” the group said.

The U.K.’s top leaders, normally at loggerheads with each other with a general election three weeks away, found common ground over the attack

“’Just Stop Oil’ is a disgrace,” Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said on social media site X.

“The damage done to Stonehenge is outrageous. Just Stop Oil are pathetic,” said leader of the Labour Party Keir Starmer, who is the frontrunner for the Prime Minister’s post.

‘Just Stop Oil’ members have attacked a number of culturally significant objects. Two activists in their 80s – a priest and a retired teacher – had smashed the case around the Magna Carta in the British Museum in May. In January, two other activists threw soup on the Mona Lisa at the Louvre in Paris.

German activists glued themselves to a runway at Munich airport Saturday and caused dozens of flights to be cancelled, in their latest action aimed at pushing authorities to tackle climate change. 

The activists from the Last Generation environmental protest group forced their way into Germany’s second-busiest airport by cutting through a fence in the early hours, an airport spokesman said. 

Flights were suspended, leading to the cancellation of 61 take-offs and landings, he said. 

The action came to an end with the arrest of eight climate activists, police told the local public broadcaster.

Both airport runways have been open again since 7:20 am (0520 GMT) but disruptions are expected to continue throughout the day. It came at the start of a long weekend in Germany, which is a busy day for travel.

Last Generation are known for mounting eye-catching protests — from gluing themselves to busy roads, to flinging mashed potato at a Claude Monet painting — which have sharply divided public opinion and brought increasingly tough responses from authorities. 

Transport Minister Volker Wissing condemned the action, saying it was “not a legitimate protest, but a targeted intervention in air traffic.”

“If air traffic is not safe, people are put at risk, major economic damage is threatened and thousands of travellers are stranded.”

But in a post on X, formerly Twitter, Last Generation accused the government of not doing enough to discourage people from flying, a major source of climate-damaging emissions.

“It is absurd that people are more likely to be able to afford flights than train journeys,” the group said. “The responsibility for this lies with the government: it subsidises flights while the railways are being cut to the bone.”

In December 2022, activists from the group had also glued themselves to a runway at Munich airport but caused only minor delays.
 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Swedish activist Greta Thunberg has been charged with a public order offence after a climate protest in central London, CNN reported. The 20-year-old was one of 26 people charged after protesters gathered outside the luxury InterContinental Hotel during the Energy Intelligence Forum. The protesters chanted ”oily money out” and sought to block access to the hotel on Tuesday.

As per Metropolitan Police, Ms Thunberg is accused of breaching a Section 14 order that police put in place outside the InterContinental Hotel on Park Lane, where oil executives were meeting on Tuesday.

”The protestors were asked to move from the road onto the pavement, which would enable them to continue with their demonstration without breaching the conditions,” a statement by Metropolitan Police said. 

Video footage of the incident showed Ms Thunberg, wearing a badge with the slogan ‘Oily Money Out’ standing calmly as two police officers spoke to her. One was seen holding her arm.

Ms Thunberg said at the demonstration, “Behind these closed doors at the Oil and Money conference, spineless politicians are making deals and compromises with lobbyists from destructive industries – the fossil fuel industry. People all over the world are suffering and dying from the consequences of the climate crisis caused by these industries who we allowed to meet with our politicians and have privileged access to.”

NEW: Greta Thunberg has just been detained protesting a Big Oil conference in London.

This was her powerful message to the fossil fuel industry before she was detained.@fossilfreeLDN#OilyMoneyOutpic.twitter.com/wZAfvAvE7e

— Greenpeace UK (@GreenpeaceUK) October 17, 2023

Ms Thunberg was detained and taken to a police station before being released overnight, police said. She has been released on bail with a trial set for November 15. The other protesters facing charges were also allowed bail.

Greta Thunberg, who became the face of young climate activists worldwide after staging weekly protests in front of the Swedish parliament in 2018, has this year been detained by police or removed from protests in Sweden, Norway, and Germany.