Declaring "we need to move to climate change justice," the Lahore High Court Green Bench ordered the government of Pakistan to implement the National Climate Change Policy and convened a Climate Change Commission to oversee and report to the Court on progress.
The district court determined it was unreasonable for agencies to quantify the benefits of lease modifications for coal mining and then explain that a similar analysis of the costs of GHG emissions and climate impacts was impossible when such an analysis was in fact possible due to the availability of the Social Cost of Carbon Protocol, even if the cost-benefit analysis was not required by law. Thus, the court set aside the government authorizations of the proposed expansion of coal mining operations and ordered the intervening mining companies to stop exploration activities.
The Supreme Court determined several Colombian authorities responsible for the deforestation in the Amazon and ordered those authorities to develop plans and implement measures to stop the emissions of GHGs and other harmful impacts caused by deforestation in order to protect fundamental rights of Colombians, especially those of children and future generations.
Constitutional Court nullified law allowing mining in páramos (high-elevation wetlands), despite a general moratorium on mining activities in these ecologically important areas. Because páramos provide environmental services in regulating the hydrological cycle and sequestering carbon, the Court decided the government must protect páramos as part of its duty to fulfill the fundamental constitutional rights to water and a healthy environment.
The court found deficiencies in the Resource Management Plans at issue that must be remedied, including failure to consider the indirect effects of downstream combustion of resources extracted from the planning areas, failure to quantify properly the magnitude of methane pollution by arbitrarily using outdated science, and failure to consider any alternative with less coal available for leasing.
