German court ends landmark climate case brought by Peruvian farmer against RWE

# German court ends landmark climate case brought by Peruvian farmer against RWE

A German court has rejected a long-running climate lawsuit brought by a Peruvian farmer against energy company RWE, bringing a 10-year legal battle to an end while still leaving climate campaigners claiming a partial victory.

Saúl Luciano Lliuya had argued that RWE’s historic greenhouse-gas emissions contributed to the melting of glaciers near his home city of Huaraz in Peru and increased the risk of flooding from Lake Palcacocha. He sought €17,000 in compensation, saying the money would help pay for flood defences. The higher regional court in Hamm ruled that the flood risk to his property was not high enough for the case to proceed and ruled out further appeals.

The ruling means the specific claim is over, but the reasoning mattered beyond this one dispute. According to the BBC, the judges also said that energy companies could in principle be held responsible for costs caused by their carbon emissions. Environmental groups seized on that part of the decision, even though the case itself failed.

The case had already passed through several legal stages. A lower court rejected it in 2015, arguing that one company could not be held responsible for climate change. In 2017, however, Lliuya won an appeal that allowed the case to continue, turning what began as a narrow compensation claim into a test of whether courts could connect individual polluters to specific climate harms.

RWE said it was not active in Peru and questioned why it had been singled out. The company also pointed to its own plans to phase out coal-fired power and become carbon neutral by 2040.

For Lliuya and the lawyers backing him, the point of the case was never only the money. They were trying to show that climate damage could be argued in civil law rather than treated only as a policy problem. His lawyers had said RWE was responsible for a small share of global emissions and should pay a corresponding part of the cost of a flood defence project.

The Hamm court did not accept that logic in this case. But the case has now established a clearer legal record of how far such claims can go, and how far they still cannot. Climate advocates say that matters because similar arguments are likely to be tested in other jurisdictions.

The wider significance is that courts are still being asked to decide whether long-term emissions can be tied to concrete local risks. In Huaraz, that risk is flooding. In legal terms, the question was whether one company’s contribution could be linked closely enough to one threatened place. The court said no on these facts, even as it opened a door campaigners say could matter later.