Court Orders South Korea to Take Stronger Action on Climate Change

A top South Korean court on Thursday ruled the nation’s measures for fighting climate change insufficient for protecting the rights of citizens, and ordered the government to set firm carbon-reduction targets for 2031 and beyond. It is the first climate litigation ruling of its kind in Asia.

Since 2020, the Constitutional Court has been reviewing a series of complaints filed by more than 250 plaintiffs — one-third of them children or teenagers at the time of the filing — who said that the government’s greenhouse gas reduction targets and its implementation plans were partly unconstitutional and too weak to safeguard the rights of citizens, particularly those of future generations.

South Korea’s Carbon Neutral Act, first enacted in 2010, required the country to set a goal of cutting carbon emissions by at least 35 percent by 2030 compared with 2018 levels. Under the law, the government has set a goal of a 40 percent reduction. The plaintiffs argued that this was not enough to manage the impact of climate change.

In its decision on Thursday, the Constitutional Court did not find fault with the 2030 goal. But it declared that because the law failed to specify carbon-emission reduction targets for the years between 2031 and 2050 — when the country said it would achieve carbon neutrality — the constitutional rights of future generations had been violated.

The court gave the National Assembly until the end of February 2025 to revise the law.

“Future generations will be more exposed to the impact of climate change, but their participation in today’s democratic political process is limited,” the court said. “So the legislators have the duty and responsibility to make concrete laws for mid- and long-term greenhouse gas reduction plans.”

The plaintiffs and their lawyers hailed the verdict as “historic.”

“This ruling marks the first victory in climate litigation in Asia,” they said in a news release. “The ruling could serve as a critical turning point, inspiring further legal actions across Asia to challenge insufficient climate policies.”

“Grown-ups always tell us to ‘act like children,’ but they don’t listen to our voice on matters of important responsibility,” Han Jeah, 12, one of the plaintiffs, said at a news conference after Thursday’s verdict. “Through this lawsuit, I wanted to show how much I cared about the climate.”

The government’s Ministry of Environment said on Thursday that it respected the court’s ruling and would take follow-up measures.

As the effects of climate change are felt around the world, people have begun regarding the fight against them as an issue of human or constitutional rights.

The ruling in South Korea followed the German Federal Constitutional Court’s 2021 landmark ruling, which mandated stronger action on climate to protect the rights of future generations. ​In April, Europe’s top human rights court ruled that the Swiss government had violated the human rights of its citizens by failing to do enough to combat climate change​.

Climate activists who helped organize the lawsuits hoped that the verdict​ in South Korea would influence climate litigation and policy in other Asian nations where similar cases have been filed, including Japan and Taiwan.

“Today’s ruling is not simply a verdict on ‘greenhouse gas reduction,’” said Lee Young-kyung, the executive director of the civic group Climate Crisis Emergency Action. “It is a declaration, through the Constitution and the government’s responsibility, that our dignified lives must be protected. It is the beginning of a just response to the climate crisis.”