Sindh farmers ruined by the 2022 floods take two German firms to court for climate damages

Thirty-nine farmers from Pakistan's Sindh province who lost crops, livestock and homes in the 2022 floods are suing German energy company RWE and cement maker Heidelberg Materials for compensation, BSS reports from AFP. The case targets the firms not for any operations in Pakistan but for their emissions, which the farmers argue contributed to climate change and supercharged the rain.

The plaintiffs estimate RWE's share of global industrial emissions at 0.68 percent and Heidelberg Materials' at 0.12 percent. Both companies deny wrongdoing and call the claims unfounded. Heidelberg Materials said its operations complied with German law, and RWE described the suit as another attempt to move climate policy demands into German courtrooms.

Abdul Hafeez Khoso, 43, from a village among the rice fields of Jacobabad district, told AFP that 2022 was an apocalyptic scene that even the elders had never witnessed. Munawar Khatoon, a woman landowner in Usman Samtio village, said the floods hit just before the wheat harvest, drowning the seed and the family's main income. Abdul Khalique Laghari, 55, of Dadu district, puts his losses at US$14,000 in his house, 40 acres (16 hectares) of crops and livestock, and is still in debt.

The floods covered a third of Pakistan, killed 1,700 people and affected 30 million. The lawsuit draws on research documenting farmers' losses. Mir Keerio, a development expert at Pakistan's HANDS Welfare Foundation, which organised the communities, said science shows climate change raises the risk and intensity of extreme weather, so those who contributed most must be held to account.

A Peruvian farmer brought a similar case against RWE; his claim was rejected last year, but the German courts left the door open to holding emitters liable. German lawyer Roda Verheyen, who worked on both cases, said big companies knew about climate impacts from the 1960s and should have done more to cut emissions. Lawyers say a ruling ordering compensation in proportion to a firm's emissions would be a major breakthrough.

Pakistan is among the countries hit hardest by climate change despite producing less than one percent of global emissions. The civil case is likely to take years. "This case is for justice," Khatoon said.

Photo: Ali Hyder Junejo / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Source: BSS