Norway’s Supreme Court ruled against environmental groups, saying the right to a clean environment did not bar the government from drilling for offshore oil in the Arctic.
Norway’s Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected an effort, based on the country’s constitutional right to a clean environment, to invalidate licenses for new oil exploration in the Arctic, enabling drilling to continue.
Specifically, the court decided that a set of oil drilling permits in the Arctic, given in 2016, were not breaching either the Norwegian Constitution’s right to a clean environment or the European Convention on Human Rights. The judges also said that Norway did not legally carry the responsibility for emissions stemming from oil it has exported.
The case, which began last month, was the first climate-change litigation to be brought under the environmental provisions of Norway’s Constitution, and is considered a high-profile cas in a series of climate-change lawsuits brought by activists in Europe and elsewhere.
The plaintiffs for the case, Greenpeace and Nature and Youth Norway, argued that approving oil exploration violates human rights conventions due to its contributions to increased carbon emissions.
In 2016, multiple companies were awarded licenses to conduct exploratory drilling in the South and South East Barents Sea, where oil and gas fields have recently been built.
Moreover, parliament approved opening the area for exploration three years earlier, in spite of arguments from environmental groups that the oil-exploration plans were not thoroughly researched before being approved.
The Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, who donated about $29,000 toward the legal cost of the lawsuit, said that the decision was no surprise.
In addition, Frode Pleym, the head of Greenpeace Norway, stated that it was “scary and absurd” that the right to a clean environment could not be used to stop harming Norway’s environment.
