In April 2024, a group of Swiss older women won a landmark case at the European Court of Human Rights (The European Court of Human Rights sits in Strasbourg, France, and is an organ of the Council of Europe, which currently has 46 member states) (Registrar of the European Court of Human Rights, 2024). The group, Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz (Senior Women for Climate Protection), successfully argued that the Swiss government’s failure to act in a timely and appropriate way to mitigate climate change violated their right to privacy and family life, protected under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The group proved that the Swiss government had failed to comply with its duty under the European Convention to provide effective protection from the harmful effects of climate change on their lives, health, well-being, and quality of life.
As the first time the European Court of Human Rights has ruled on rights violations related to climate change, this case has significant consequences. It sets a precedent and may well pave the way for similar cases against the 45 other Council of Europe governments that have ratified the European Convention, whether those cases be in Strasbourg or before national courts looking at government inaction on climate change. The Swiss government is obliged by the judgement to update its climate policies or face further legal action, notwithstanding the Swiss parliament’s non-binding vote in June 2024 to reject the Court’s ruling. The government’s implementation of the judgement will be formally monitored by the Council of Europe.
Even without further litigation, the ruling should prompt all relevant governments to evaluate whether or not they are doing what the Court has said is required of them. In reality, despite human rights obligations to confront climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and helping people adapt to its impact, governments across the world have failed to take effective steps to protect older people from foreseeable harm. This article draws on Human Rights Watch’s research on the impact on older people of government responses to extreme weather events in several European countries, Australia, and Canada, all among the world’s top emitters of the greenhouse gas emissions driving the climate crisis (Climate Watch, n.d.). Such extreme weather events are expected to become more frequent as the climate continues to change and temperatures rise.
International Human Rights Obligations
Governments have obligations derived from international human rights law to address climate change, which entails both helping at-risk groups deal with the foreseeable harms of extreme weather events and effectively and quickly reducing the global greenhouse gas emissions that are driving them.
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights requires governments to protect the right to life, including from foreseeable threats. Under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, governments must ensure equal rights for people with disabilities, including older people with disabilities, and ensure their protection and safety during natural disasters.
The United Nations has repeatedly advised governments to make their climate action and planning more inclusive. In 2021, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights urged states to “ensure that climate change and disaster risk reduction measures are age- and gender-responsive and disability-inclusive and take into account the needs and rights of older women and men” (OHCHR, 2021, para. 68b).
As the European Court of Human Rights affirmed in the case of the Swiss older women, governments have an obligation under Article 8 (the right to respect for private and family life) of the European Convention on Human Rights to protect people against the serious adverse effects of climate change on their lives, health, well-being, and quality of life (Registrar of the European Court of Human Rights, 2024). At the time of this writing, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights was conducting a hearing (Kaminski, 2024) to establish states’ human rights obligations to respond to the climate emergency and its particular impact on people from diverse regions and population groups (The Republic of Chile & The Republic of Colombia, 2023).
Foreseeable Adverse Impacts of Extreme Weather Events on Older People
Central to the success of the group of Swiss older women before the European Court of Human Rights was their ability to show that extreme weather events linked to climate change, in particular heatwaves, have a particularly adverse effect on them as older women. Climate impacts affect everyone but are especially hard on the health and well-being of people who are already at risk (UN Human Rights Council, 2020). In 2021, the United Nations warned that older people are at increased risk of experiencing climate change impacts (OHCHR, 2021, para. 9).
Since the turn of the century, the vast majority of deaths for heat-related reasons have been of older people. For example, in France’s heatwave in 2003, 91% of people who died were 65 and older (Fouillet et al., 2006). In the United Kingdom 90% of heat-related deaths in 2021 (UK Government, 2024), and 98% in Spain’s heatwave in 2022 (MoMo, n.d.), were people 65 and older. In the June–July 2021 heat dome in British Columbia, Canada, 90% of heat-related deaths were people 60 and older (British Columbia Coroners Service, 2022, p. 13).
Older people, especially older women (Davis, 2022), are at particular risk of heat-related illness and death for a few reasons. They are less able to adapt to sudden changes in temperature and are more likely to have medical conditions that can make heat more dangerous, such as heart or respiratory conditions. Older people might also take medications that cause heat intolerance and impair the body’s response to heat, including its ability to thermoregulate. Finally, they may feel less thirsty and quickly become dehydrated, conditions that some medications can exacerbate (Kaltsatou et al., 2018).
Older people with disabilities are at particular risk, because the risks to them as older people are compounded by heat risks for people with disabilities. People of all ages with some physical disabilities experience greater pain and fatigue on hot days. For example, some people with spinal cord and traumatic brain injuries are at higher risk of heat-related illnesses because of their limited capacity to sweat, which is the body’s primary way of cooling down (Price & Trbovich, 2018). People of all ages with psychosocial, or mental health, disabilities have a two- to three-times higher risk of death from heat, partly because of the impact of certain medications on the body’s ability to thermoregulate (Lawrance et al., 2021). In British Columbia, people with schizophrenia died at a higher rate during the 2021 heat dome than those with other conditions (Chen et al., 2023). In England, one study found a 4.5% increase in hospital admissions of people living with dementia per 1 °C increase above 17 °C (Gong et al., 2022).
Older people’s risk of adverse impacts of climate change and other extreme weather events is heightened by social and economic factors, including poverty, discrimination, stigma, ageism, or ableism (Human Rights Watch, 2022a). Social isolation, which may disproportionately impact older people (World Health Organization, 2021), further increases these risks. Studies have shown that older people on low incomes who do not have access to air conditioning, cooling stations, or healthcare facilities have a higher rate of mortality (Kaltsatou et al., 2018). Older people living in residential care facilities are also at particular risk of heat-related mortality (World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe, 2021, p. 125).
Given all this available information, it is clear that the impacts on older people of extreme heat, which is worsening due to climate change, are foreseeable. Also foreseeable are the impacts on older people of flooding. The latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s leading scientific body on climate change, projects an increase in more extreme rainfall events and flood magnitudes in eastern Australia, including New South Wales, due to warming temperatures (Lawrence et al., 2022). Older people and others at risk during flooding may need additional assistance and time to evacuate, may not have access to any warnings, and may not be meaningfully included in evacuation and emergency response plans.
United Nations data shows that the number of older migrants is increasing each year (UN/DESA Population Division, 2020, Table 1). Older people will be among those displaced by climate change from, or left behind in, areas affected by climate change and may have limited access to support and services (World Health Organization, 2022, p. 12).
Inadequate Government Responses to Extreme Weather Events
Just as the European Court ruled that the Swiss government failed to take appropriate climate action to meet its human rights obligations toward older women, other governments lack action plans to deal with the foreseeable impacts of extreme weather events, including heatwaves, on older people.
Heatwaves in Europe
Despite being among the world’s top producers of greenhouse gas emissions driving the climate crisis (Climate Watch, n.d.), European governments have largely failed to help at-risk populations deal with the impacts of global warming. This is particularly problematic given Europe’s status as a “heatwave hotspot,” according to one scientific study finding that the number of heatwaves there has increased faster than other regions in the ostensible “temperate zone” (Rousi et al., 2022, p. 1). Temperatures in Europe are expected to continue rising (Kovats et al., 2014), and heatwaves will be more common, with human-caused climate change being the main driver (Zachariah et al., 2022). July 2022’s heatwave saw temperatures rise to over 40 °C, including in the United Kingdom, Portugal, and Spain, with wildfires in Croatia, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Portugal, and Spain (Jones, 2022).
Some countries have local or national heat action plans that target at-risk populations like older people, such as Brussels (City of Brussels, 2023) and France (Garric, 2023). However, the World Health Organization (WHO) found in 2019 that only 16 countries in the WHO European Region had national heat-health action plans (and that these were not adequately resourced), six had sub-national plans, and only 16 had fully or partly implemented heat-health warning systems in place (World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe, 2021, pp. 26, 45).
Heat Dome in British Columbia, Canada
European countries are not alone. Between June 25 and July 1, 2021, British Columbia (or BC), Canada’s western-most province, experienced a heat dome, a high-pressure weather system that traps heat, with record-high temperatures reaching up to 46.6 °C (Mangione, 2021). According to British Columbia’s chief coroner, of the 719 sudden deaths during this period, many were “older individuals living alone in private residences with minimal ventilation” (BC Gov News, 2021, para. 6).
British Columbia did not have a heat action plan, and lack of access to cooling and targeted support for at-risk populations contributed to unnecessary suffering and, possibly, deaths (Human Rights Watch, 2021). Relatedly, BC Emergency Health Services acted far too slowly: They did not activate their emergency operations center to coordinate their response until after the heat dome began to subside (Daflos, 2021). News media reported several cases of older people dying while waiting for an ambulance, including Gian Goel, 71, who, according to news reports, died while waiting 90 minutes for an ambulance on June 27, 2021, despite living about 10 minutes away from a hospital (Little, 2021). One person told Human Rights Watch that her 88-year-old aunt, who used a wheelchair, had been unable to get through to 911 (Canada’s emergency services number) and died on June 28, 2021, as a result of the heat dome (Human Rights Watch, 2021). At the time, staffing shortages at BC Emergency Health Services were causing delays across the emergency response system (CBC News, 2021).
According to the BC Centre for Disease Control, “most deaths occurred in the community in private residences, and the areas of risk had … less green space, more people living alone, and lower income levels” (Union of BC Municipalities, 2021, para. 7). Older people living in poverty told Human Rights Watch how they struggled because they could not afford cooling devices (Human Rights Watch, 2021). Ember (a pseudonym), a 69-year-old woman with a physical disability living in a subsidized housing unit in South Surrey, said the temperature in her apartment reached 39 °C during the heat dome and that she developed a cough and a persistent fever. “Money is scarce for anything so luxurious as a proper fan or, heaven forbid, an air conditioner,” Ember said (Human Rights Watch, 2021, Section Poverty). MaryBeth (who requested we only use her first name), 74, said: “It is stressful whenever I have to spend money being on a tight small pension” (Human Rights Watch, 2021, Section Poverty).
In response to the 2021 heat dome, the British Columbia authorities developed the BC Heat Alert and Response System (BC HARS), which recognizes that older people are among those most at risk (BC Centre for Disease Control & BC Ministry of Health, 2024). The provincial government launched BC HARS in June 2022 (BC Centre for Disease Control & BC Ministry of Health, 2024, p. 1). British Columbia has not experienced a similar heat dome since its launch.
Flooding in Lismore, New South Wales, Australia
It is not only around heatwaves that governments have failed to take effective steps to protect older people from foreseeable harm in extreme weather events. Flooding is another climate change impact that requires better government responses.
Human Rights Watch found that during the 2022 flooding in Lismore, New South Wales, Australia, the New South Wales and local authorities did not provide adequate flood warnings, evacuation warnings, or rescue support, leaving older people, and other at-risk individuals, in life-threatening circumstances with little government assistance. Of the four people who drowned in the floods, two were women in their 80s, along with a woman and a man in their 50s (Human Rights Watch, 2022b).
The independent inquiry set up by the New South Wales government after the flooding determined that the State Emergency Service did not adequately communicate the risk of such severe weather through its flood bulletins, its website, Facebook, and other warning methods. It also found that many residents did not receive texts urging them to evacuate (NSW Independent 2022 Flood Inquiry, 2022).
Only two of the 15 households Human Rights Watch interviewed said that emergency services had knocked on their door and advised them to evacuate by themselves (Human Rights Watch, 2022b). By then, it was dark, and the rising water was already beginning to block evacuation routes.
Some residents in their 70s and 80s said they did not regularly use or possess cell phones and thus had no access to the latest weather data or warnings. Meanwhile, many of those who did receive text messages from the authorities that flood levels were expected to be around 11 or 12 metres went to sleep unconcerned about their safety, because their homes were above that height. Unfortunately, those flood line predictions were inaccurate (Lismore saw 14.4 metres of flooding), so they woke to find rapidly rising water inside their homes.
By early morning, the floodwater inside the house of Pat Bobbin (Pat), 74, and her husband, Jack Bobbin (Jack), 82, was quickly rising. Emergency services eventually rescued the couple, just as the water rose over Pat’s shoulders. She said she and Jack would have drowned except that her grandson, who had a cell phone, did not stop trying to reach emergency services, despite many failed attempts to get through. “We wouldn’t have made it out, I don’t think, if he hadn’t been there,” Pat said (Human Rights Watch, 2022b, Section Older People).
Recommendations
Governments should meet their human rights obligations to confront climate change, including by taking the following immediate actions:
• As the global climate crisis intensifies, high-emitter and fossil fuel producer countries should commit to a fair, fast, full, and funded phase-out of all fossil fuels. They should also prepare for foreseeable risks from extreme weather events, in part by ensuring those most at risk are protected.
• Governments should consult with older people, including older women and older people with disabilities, as well as with other at-risk groups, to identify their specific needs and evaluate effective practices, as part of their climate change adaptation and mitigation planning, including for extreme heat. Emergency messaging methods and emergency preparedness and response programmes should be adequately resourced and inclusive, accessible to everyone, and developed in consultation with those most affected.
• Governments should collect disaggregated data of people whose deaths are related to climate change, including by age, gender, and disability.
• Finally, governments should support the establishment of a new UN convention on the rights of older people, which could (and should) elaborate, among a comprehensive and interdependent range of rights, a guarantee of the rights of older people in situations of risk and emergencies, including extreme weather events.
References
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