A grouping of environmental and human rights organisations are taking the government of PM Petteri Orpo (NCP) to court over what they consider insufficient action to battle climate change.
The organisations believe that the government is in breach of the law, as Finland has slipped both in its national goal to be carbon neutral by 2035 and in its EU climate commitments during the Orpo government's term in office, which began last summer.
Meeting both targets is enshrined in the Climate Change Act. The act entered into force in its current form in July 2022.
Experts have long predicted that Finland will fall short of its climate targets under current measures. This was also stated in the official Annual Climate Report, published this past June. At that time, Environment and Climate Minister Kai Mykkänen (NCP) also directly acknowledged the situation.
The government conceded in its 2023 programme that it would fall short of the EU's carbon sink obligation for forests in 2021-25. A recent report by the expert Finnish Climate Change Panel shows that the government's actions have increased emissions from transport, even though the EU's climate obligation requires a significant reduction.
Finland has committed to halving climate emissions by 2030 under EU burden sharing agreements, where transport is the largest single source of emissions. According to a Climate Change Panel report on Thursday, Finland could be fined hundreds of millions of euros in fines if transport emissions are not reduced quickly enough. The panel, a body of 15 experts in various climate-related fields stated that failure to meet the EU target would be even more costly for consumers than domestic action to reduce transport emissions.
According to the organisations involved in the legal challenge, the government's inaction jeopardises the implementation of six articles of the Climate Change Act and also violates fundamental and human rights.
The Finnish Association for Nature Conservation, Greenpeace, Amnesty, the Finnish Nature Association, the advocacy organization Finnish Sámi Youth, and Climate Grandparents Finland have filed a joint complaint with the Supreme Administrative Court.
"We demand that the government take swift and adequate action to meet climate targets," Finnish Association for Nature Conservation climate expert Hanna Aho said at a press conference on Thursday.
Progress towards Finland's climate targets has collapsed largely because of the inadequacy of the carbon sink formed by forests. The land use sector shifted from sink to emission source in 2018, according to current data. It was again a net sink last year, in 2023, but it is still not sufficient to meet climate targets.
"We have been waiting for government action to save the carbon sinks for more than two years. We have received a wealth of reports and statistics to enable informed decisions on further action to meet climate targets. But we have not seen the actual decisions," said Aho.
According to Aho, the measures planned by the Orpo government to strengthen carbon sinks do not meet the obligations of the Climate Change Act and the urgency of the situation. For example, the government has not updated the climate plan for the land use sector, which is key for carbon sinks.
"It is not a law of nature that the targets cannot be met, they just require major action," Aho pointed out.
Previous complaint dismissed
This is the second climate lawsuit against a Finnish government. The Finnish Association for Nature Conservation and Greenpeace filed a similar complaint against the previous government headed by Social Democrat Sanna Marin in 2022.
At the time, the Supreme Administrative Court declined to hear the case, saying that the Climate Act had been in force for too short a time.
More time has passed, and Aho believes that the criteria for the case to be heard this time have been met. She said that the previous action also changed case law.
She added that government has missed several opportunities to decide on emission reductions and revoked a number of measures to reduce emissions from transport.
Logging directly affects the size of the carbon sink. According to Aho, it is possible to increase regulation on forests and carbon sinks in a way that would lead to lower levels of deforestation.
Human rights angle
This time, the organisations bringing the suit are also raising human rights as grounds for their action.
The inadequate measures of the government endanger the right to life, health and a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, they wrote in a release on Thursday.
The organisations cite a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) last spring, which found that the Swiss state had violated human rights by not taking sufficient climate action.
Elina Mikola, a climate and environment expert at Amnesty Finland, told the media that climate change is exacerbating inequalities and affecting already vulnerable countries and people.
The rights of indigenous peoples and children are particularly at risk.
"The failure to act on climate change is likely to be the largest transnational human rights violation in the history of the world," Mikola said at Thursday's briefing.
Since Finland is also bound by the European Convention on Human Rights, the organisations challenging the government consider that the Swiss climate ruling is a precedent that will also influence the decision the Supreme Administrative Court.
The Finnish case is also the first of several pending worldwide, which will be dealt with in the wake of the Swiss ruling.
"The ECHR ruling confirms the legal link between climate change and human rights," said Kaisa Kosonen, a Greenpeace climate expert.
An actual trial will only start if the Supreme Administrative Court decides to hear the case.
"Finland is a nation of rule of law. If there is a ruling [against the government], the authorities will have to change their actions," Kosonen pointed out.
The organisations that have brought the suit estimate that the whole process will take about a year.
26 Aug: Corrected name of Climate Grandparents Finland.