Philippine typhoon victims prepare lawsuit against fossil fuel companies accused of driving climate change
Legal experts have compared the fledgling legal push to seek damages from oil, gas and coal companies to early efforts to take on tobacco companies over health damage caused by smoking.
Responding to a complaint filed by typhoon victims, a Philippines human rights commission agreed on Friday to look into whether large international fossil fuel companies are violating the human rights of its citizens by driving climate change.
Holding oil, gas and coal companies responsible for deaths and financial losses in the Philippines “will be an uphill climb,” admitted Roberto Cadiz, a member of the Commission on Human Rights of the Philippines.
But he said he felt duty bound to take on the case, both because losses from extreme weather are mounting so rapidly and because other efforts to curb climate-changing emissions are “moving very slowly, if at all”, providing the impetus to explore other avenues.
Cadiz said the commission would launch an inquiry in the first quarter of 2016.
Activists called the complaint one of a first wave of legal challenges seeking redress for human right violations from climate change. It joins a string of recent legal filings, in countries from Germany to Pakistan to the Netherlands, seeking to force faster action to address climate change and its impacts, or claiming damages from energy companies.
