The women lived scattered around Switzerland, spoke a mixture of the country’s languages — German, French and Italian — and worked in various professions.
But the KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiza group of about 2,400 Swiss women aged 64 and over, say they have a common fear: rising temperatures and heat waves that threaten them with health ailments in their later decades.
“It’s hard to go out – it’s hard to breathe,” said Fatima Heussler, 71, a member of the group who lives in Zurich, retired after decades of working with the visually impaired elderly. Last year’s summer heat was so exhausting, she said she couldn’t do even light housework.
“I feel like I have to protect myself,” said Isabelle Joerg, 70, a former insurance risk manager and a group member from Basel, who said she sat in the dark with the blinds drawn in her home in particularly hot days. “I used to love summer – and now I can be threatened by it.”
A heat wave this summer that raised temperatures in southern Europe underscored those concerns — along with a landmark lawsuit filed by women in 2020 at Europe’s top human rights court accusing the Swiss government of violating their basic rights by not doing enough to protect them from the effects of climate change.
Switzerland experienced its hottest year on last year’s record, and although it hasn’t been as battered as southern Europe this year, a hot spell early last month sent temperatures as high as 98 degrees Fahrenheit in some Alpine areas. The national average last month was about 60 degrees, about 35 degrees higher than pre-1900 records.
The case, the first of its kind to be heard at that highest court, the European Court for Human Rights, is among a growing number of lawsuits around the world that use human rights grounds to argue that governments are avoiding their obligations, due to temperature and sea. the level is increasing, to ensure the safety and security of citizens.
Similar cases have come before national courts and human rights bodies, including a finding of a United Nations human rights committee that Australia has failed to protect Indigenous Australians in the Torres Strait, in the north of the country, from the “adverse effects of climate change.”
While climate change affects all Swiss people, KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz — known in English as Senior Women for Climate Protection Switzerland — says older women like them are the most vulnerable.
A recent study found that last summer’s heat waves killed more than 61,000 people across Europe, most of them women over 80. In Switzerland, more than 60 percent of the approx. 600 heat-related deaths last summer were attributed to global warming, according to a study from the University of Bern, with older women having the highest mortality rate.
“Our health is at risk,” said Elisabeth Stern, 75, a member of KlimaSeniorinnen in Zurich and an avid hiker, who said she has kept herself fit and healthy all her life. Last summer, tired of staying indoors with the windows closed, Ms. Stern, a former cultural anthropologist, visits the colder mountains for a reprieve. But he fell into a cable car, overcome by the heat.
“There was a time when Switzerland was a cold place in general,” said Ms. Stern, who spent part of his childhood on a farm in eastern Switzerland and watched closely glacier disappear from his life. “It just changed so quickly.”
Experts say the decision in the case brought by KlimaSeniorinnen is likely to influence how the 46 member countries of the European court deal with similar claims.
“This will have a domino effect,” said Annalisa Savaresi, a senior lecturer for environmental law at the University of Stirling, in Scotland, who has studied climate change litigation. “This is the first of its kind to be heard of, but there are many more in the pipeline.”
Litigants in the Swiss case include four women who say they have heart and respiratory conditions that put them at risk of dying in the hot sun.
At the heart of the complaint is a charge that the Swiss government’s failure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions enough to prevent global warming of 2 degrees Celsius is contrary to its obligations under the European Human Rights Convention. Those include the rights to life and autonomy, as older women have been shown to be more vulnerable to heat-related illnesses.
“What this will give citizens is an additional tool to name and shame these states and make their grievances visible and, ultimately, enforceable,” said Dr. Savaresi. But, he added, how such decisions might be enforced remains in “uncharted territory.”
The case was first brought to domestic courts in 2016, the Swiss Supreme Court ruled that there was insufficient evidence to prove that women’s rights had been violated. The litigants said the courts had not properly analyzed that case, so they took it higher, to the European Court of Human Rights.
The Swiss government has argued that international law does not grant rights to individuals to be protected from climate change, and that addressing its effects should be a political, rather than legal, process. It declined to comment further on the proceedings for this article, saying it was awaiting sentencing.
Other governments, such as Ireland, also provided arguments in the case on behalf of the Swiss government, while some rights groups supported the litigants.
Marc Willers, one of the lawyers involved, said the litigants felt a moral obligation to pursue the case. If Switzerland, one of the richest and most advanced countries in the world, does not step up to tackle climate change, he said, “what hope do other countries have to fill the gap?”
Experts say Europe will experience more frequent and more intense heat waves in the future, with Switzerland particularly vulnerable and warming more than double the rate of the global average. Its glaciers melted last year at a faster rate than ever recorded, and dwindling winter snow in Alpine villages is devastating for popular ski resorts.
That urgency has sent climate change to the top of the political agenda, with climate activists says the country is not doing enough to meet its obligations under the Paris Agreement, the 2015 agreement aimed at reducing global emissions.
In June, Swiss voters passed a referendum that would require Switzerland to reach a net zero emissions target by 2050.
Many women in KlimaSeniorinnen, affiliated with Greenpeace, are long-time activists who have also taken up the mantle of reducing emissions in their daily lives.
said Ms. Heussler, of Zurich, who rarely travels, doesn’t own a car and grows his own vegetables. But he mostly gave up gardening during last year’s heat waves, except for the earliest hours of the day.
said Ms. Joerg, of Basel, who was excited to retire a few years ago. “I thought, ‘Finally, no job, no job, no agenda,'” he says, “‘I can do whatever I want.'” Instead, during the heat waves of the past few years, stayed he is indoors, unable to go out to see friends or otherwise socialize. “That makes me angry,” he said.
A decision in the KlimaSeniorinnen case is not expected until 2024. The court is also considering several other cases related to climate change, including one filed by a group of Portuguese children who accused the 33 countries for not upholding their human rights obligations by failing to curb emissions, and by a French citizen who brought a similar case against the French government.
But while they wait and try to move on with their lives, KlimaSeniorinnen members say they hope the case will show that older people can be powerful climate advocates, even if they may not be around for the future.
“I know that statistically speaking in 10 years, I’m gone,” said Ms. Stern, the avid hiker. “So no matter what I fight now, I will not be a benefactor.”
He added, “It’s for the next generation.”