Choi Hee-woo was a 20-week-old embryo when he joined a landmark climate lawsuit in South Korea. At the time, his mother intended to make Choi’s older sibling a plaintiff in a lawsuit that argued that the South Korean government had not acted adequately on climate change. But when she learned that an unborn child could be a party to a lawsuit, she nicknamed the child Woodpecker – because she heard the bird’s call when she first learned she was pregnant – and reported him. The case became known as Woodpecker et al. against South Korea.
The now nearly 2-year-old boy is one of more than 250 claimants, of all ages, ensuring the South Korean government is not waiting too long to act on its legal commitment to carbon neutrality. Last week, a constitutional court partially sided with Choi and the other plaintiffs and ordered the country’s legislature to review its climate law. In 2021, the South Korean National Assembly passed a law requiring the government to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 35 percent by 2030 and become carbon neutral by 2050. In response to the law, the government set a goal of reduced by 40 percent by 2030, which the plaintiffs argued was insufficient to protect their fundamental right to life and a clean environment.
The court, which examines the constitutionality of laws, ruled that the interim 2030 goal was sufficient – but it ordered the National Assembly to develop additional concrete plans to ensure progress continues at a strong pace. after 2030, in order to achieve the 2050 goal of carbon neutrality. The decision is a partial victory for plaintiffs, and it requires the National Assembly to revise the existing climate law by the end of February 2026.
“The Korean Constitutional Court is very conservative,” Byung-Joo Lee, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, told Grist. “But the court made it very clear that the climate crisis is a scientific and legal fact, and they recognized that the state has a duty to protect people from climate change. It’s a clear, constitutional right of the people.”
The judgment is the first of its kind in Asia and may include the outcomes Japan and Taiwanwhere similar cases make their way through the courts. Climate lawsuits by young people against state and federal governments around the world have steadily gained momentum over the past decade. Earlier this year, the Hawai’i Department of Transportation entered into a historic settlement with youth plaintiffs suing the agency for failing to adequately protect their right to a clean environment. Similar cases are pending Montana, Alaska, Utah and Virginia. In April, ruled the European Court of Human Rights that Switzerland’s limited action on climate change endangers the lives of a group of women over the age of 64, who argued that they are particularly susceptible to heat waves. And in 2021, a German court sided with the youth who argued that the country’s goals for reducing greenhouse gases were insufficient.
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The ruling by South Korea’s constitutional court is “consistent with other court decisions worldwide that have found that a failure to either adequately or achieve any mid- or long-term targets violates some form of protected rights,” said Michael Burger, executive director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University. The court’s finding that the lack of interim targets is unconstitutional is significant because it ensures there is a road map for the government to reach its 2050 goal of carbon neutrality.
“The failure to include [interim goals] can be seen as handing the money over to a generation 20 years later,” said Burger. “That’s the problem the court found with the lack of interim plans, that it puts the burden on some future generation to come up with a solution.”
The lawsuit in South Korea was first filed in 2020 by 19 young people affiliated with Youth 4 Climate Action, a group inspired by Greta Thunberg’s school climate strikes that leads the Korean arm of the movement. When three other similar cases were later filed by other groups, the court consolidated the cases into one, bringing the total number of plaintiffs to 255. About a third of them were children when the cases were filed.
“Responding to the climate crisis means reducing its risks, controlling factors that may exacerbate the crisis, and building safety nets to sustain life and society,” said Kim Seo-gyeong, an activist from Youth 4 Climate Action, said in a press release. “I look forward to seeing how this constitutional complaint will change the standards for climate response and what transformations it will bring.”
Burger said the ruling “is likely to inform and influence other judges, particularly in the region.” Last month, a group of young people in Japan filed a lawsuit against ten thermal power companies in the country, demanding that the facilities reduce their emissions in line with internationally agreed targets to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) to keep.
“As a significant judicial decision in Asia, the Constitutional Court of South Korea’s decision will also have a significant impact in Japan,” Mie Asaoka, a lawyer representing the youth plaintiffs, said in a statement. “We are confident that this decision will serve as a powerful catalyst for change in Japan’s judicial landscape.”
Lee, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, told Grist that the case has raised awareness about the climate crisis among South Koreans. Since the court required the National Assembly to review the climate law, Lee has encouraged plaintiffs and climate action groups to start fighting lawmakers to introduce the strictest requirements possible.
“Our fight in the constitutional court has ended, but our next fight in the Korean Congress is just beginning,” Lee said.
