Belgian Farmer Sues Energy Company Over Climate Damages

Farmer Hugues Falys has taken legal action against French oil and gas com­pany TotalEnergies, claim­ing he has suf­fered pro­fes­sional dam­age due to the com­pa­ny’s cli­mate dis­rup­tion.

Falys, a live­stock breeder and cere­als and veg­etable grower from Hainaut, a province of Wallonia and Belgium, has argued that TotalEnergies, one of the world’s top car­bon diox­ide emit­ting cor­po­ra­tions, must be held liable for part of the dam­age caused to his busi­ness by the adverse weather between 2016 and 2022.

According to his claim, dur­ing this period, suc­ces­sive droughts impacted the fod­der crops grow­ing in his fields, requir­ing him to buy hay for his ani­mals and even­tu­ally own­ing fewer cat­tle.

“Climate change is hav­ing a tan­gi­ble impact on my work and life: yield losses, extra work and the stress that comes from deal­ing with a dis­rupted crop cal­en­dar,” Falys said in a press release. ​“My pro­fes­sion is inti­mately linked to the cli­mate. In recent years, cli­mate change has caused farm­ers a great deal of dam­age and left us uncer­tain about the future.”

Scientific research has indi­cated that much of Europe has been in a drought since 2018, with the cen­tral European coun­tries also sig­nif­i­cantly affected.

Known in Belgium as ​‘The Farmer Case,’ Falys is seek­ing com­pen­sa­tion for the dam­age done to his busi­ness and a judi­cial order for the com­pany to halt new invest­ments in fos­sil fuel exploita­tion plans. Greenpeace and two other non-gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions back his law­suit.

Reuters reported that this is the first cli­mate change-related law­suit against a multi­na­tional firm in the chron­i­cles of Belgian law.

The farmer and his sup­port­ers have also asserted that TotalEnergies is aware of its oper­a­tions’ impact on the cli­mate since the 1970s but has delib­er­ately cho­sen to refrain from any mea­sures to avoid dam­ag­ing its busi­ness.

TotalEnergies is the largest oil dis­trib­u­tor in Belgium and the fifth most prof­itable in the world. It oper­ates an oil refin­ery and petro­chem­i­cal plant in Antwerp.

Greenpeace has included the French multi­na­tional in the global list of 21 energy cor­po­ra­tions that com­bined account for more than a third of global green­house gas emis­sions.

The Falys law­suit comes a few months after a court in Brussels ruled that the Belgian gov­ern­ment should take fur­ther mea­sures to reduce the country’s green­house gas emis­sions.

More specif­i­cally, the Brussels Court of Appeals has ordered the gov­ern­ment to cut emis­sions by at least 55 per­cent by 2030 com­pared to 1990. The court also found that the country’s cli­mate poli­cies have vio­lated human rights.

Scientists, how­ever, have argued that, for Belgium to effec­tively con­tribute to the global tar­get of keep­ing the rise of global tem­per­a­tures below 1.5 °C, the coun­try must cut its green­house emis­sions by at least 61 per­cent by 2030.

The World Meteorological Organization has also warned that the 1.5 °C warm­ing thresh­old in global tem­per­a­tures will likely be tem­porar­ily crossed by 2027.

The intro­duc­tory hear­ing in the Falys case is sched­uled to take place in court in mid-April this year.

• Reuters
• The Guardian