The case is part of a lawsuit filed two years ago and the hearing will begin on Thursday, a judicial source confirms to CNN.
The lawsuit was brought by four NGOs, including Greenpeace France and Oxfam France, following an online petition that collected 2.3 million signatures – the largest in French history, according to organizers.
Climate activists took to the streets at the administrative court of Paris on Thursday morning. Images of the NGOs had a giant banner that read, “We’re 2.3 million.”
The signatories hope the court will “force the state to take all necessary steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions” to meet the 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) target set in the Paris Agreement , the online petition said.
The Paris Agreement, a pact that entered into force by nearly all countries in the world in 2016, aims to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) and strives to limit it up to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).
Currently, the world will warm up by 2.7 degrees Celsius (4.86 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century, according to the Climate Action Tracker (CAT) – a nonprofit analysis group that tracks the government’s climate action. This will lead to more extreme storms, heat waves, greater sea level rise and, for many parts of the world, worse droughts and extreme rainfall.
French campaigners also want recognition for “the climatelessness of the state, that is, that France is not meeting its obligations”.
“Greenhouse gas emissions fell under this government’s five-year term at a rate twice as slow as the trajectories required by law,” the NGOs said in a joint statement.
In a legal memo seen last June by the NGOs and Le Monde newspaper, the French Ministry of the Environment denied that it had not fulfilled its legal obligations to combat climate change and asked for the case to be dropped.
One of the arguments put forward by the government is that it cannot be held “solely responsible” for climate change in France, according to quotations from Le Monde’s memo.
“France makes up about 1% of the world’s population and emits about 1% of the Earth’s greenhouse gases every year,” he said.
“A substantial portion of this pollution comes from industrial and agricultural activities,” but also from “individual choices and decisions that cannot always be influenced,” the memo continued.
CNN has contacted the Department of the Environment for comment.
A verdict in the case is expected within 15 days, the NGOs said in their statement.
Legal action against climate change has become a global phenomenon, according to a report published in July 2019. By that date, lawsuits had been filed against governments and corporate interests in 28 countries, according to a report by the Grantham Research Institute at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Researchers found that although the US was the world leader in climate change litigation, the prevalence of such lawsuits had spread worldwide.
Sandrine Amiel and Gaëlle Fournier reported from Paris, France. Jack Guy wrote from London.