German court rejects the monumental climate case of the Peruvian farmers

A court in Germany has rejected a lawsuit that is brought by a Peruvian farmer against the German energy giant RWE into a long -awaited decision.

Saúl Luciano Lliuya had argued that the worldwide emissions of the company contributed to the melting of glaciers in Peru – who threatened his home town of Huaraz with flooding.

He was looking for € 17,000 (£ 14,250) in compensation – money he said he would use to pay a flood defense project to protect the city.

The higher regional court in the German city of Hamm, however, has blocked the case on Wednesday to continue and has excluded a appeal, which ended the 10-year legal battle of Mr Lliuya.

RWE said it was not active in Peru and wondered why it was chosen.

It also pointed to his plans to abolish its coal-fired power plants and to become CO2 neutral by 2040.

In their ruling on Wednesday, judges were of the opinion that the flood risk for the property of Mr. Lliuya was not high enough to continue the case.

In what groups of climate change as a victory have praised, however, they said that energy companies could be held responsible for the costs caused by their CO2 emissions.

Although the amount demanded by Mr. Lliuya was very low, the case has become a cause for Celebre for activists of climate change, who hope it will create a precedent for keeping powerful companies to account.

The 44-year-old Mountain Guide and Farmer said he had taken the case because he had seen firsthand how rising temperatures caused glaciers near Huaraz to melt.

He said that Lake Palcacocha – who is above the city – now has four times as much water than in 2003 and that residents like him were at risk, especially if blocks of ice would break down Palcacocha Glacier and fell into the lake, causing it to go over.

He claimed that emissions caused by RWE contributions to the increase in temperature in the mountain region of Peru and demanded that the German company paid to building a flood defense.

Mr. Lliuya also said that he chose the company because a database database of historical emissions from 2013 of large producers of fossil fuels mentioned the German energy giant as one of the largest polluters in Europe.

The original case of Mr Lliuya was rejected in 2015 by a lower court in Germany, whereby judges claimed that a single company could not be held responsible for climate change.

But in a surprising turn, Mr. Lliuya won his appeal in 2017 to judges at the higher regional court, who accepted that there was a merit in his case and allowed it to continue.

His lawyers previously argued that RWE was responsible for 0.5% of global CO2 emissions and demanded that the energy company pay compensation for a proportional share in the costs of building a defense of $ 3.5 million for Huaraz.

Germanwatch, an environmental NGO that supported Mr. Lliuya’s case, celebrated the court’s ruling and said that it had “written legal history.”

“Although the court has rejected the specific claim – finding the flood risk for Luciano Lliuya’s house was not sufficiently high – it confirmed for the first time that large emitters could be held liable under German civil law due to risks as a result of climate change,” it said in a statement.

The group said it was hopeful that the decision could positively influence comparable cases in other countries.