Amid an unprecedented European heatwave, a Paris court ruled today that France’s biggest fossil fuel firm TotalEnergies has not fully accounted for its contribution to climate change or identified all the ways it could limit it.
A group of non-profit organisations and local authorities filed the claim in 2020 under France’s then-new duty of vigilance law. This requires all large businesses headquartered in France and international corporations with a significant presence there to set out a clear plan to prevent human rights violations and environmental damage – even among their subsidiaries.
“It’s a very big win for the whole climate movement,” said Justine Ripoll, head of campaigns for Notre Affaire à Tous, one of the NGOs that brought the claim.
She said the judges made clear that companies have climate obligations reflecting their impact on global emissions, and added that the ruling shows “lobbying to undermine legislation won’t have the impact corporations could expect.”
The ruling marks another legal victory for climate activists, after the International Court of Justice issued a landmark advisory opinion last year finding that countries can be held responsible under international law for breaching their climate obligations, including by expanding fossil fuel production. In May, the UN General Assembly backed the ruling and called on countries to comply with it.
-
The Pacific made history in the courts – now we must do it in the negotiations
Legal clarity alone will not lead to reduced emissions, more finance or stronger national climate plans – political will is key to meeting states’ obligations -
UN General Assembly backs “climate obligations” set by world’s top court
A UN resolution endorses a landmark climate ruling by the International Court of Justice that states should reduce fossil fuels and repair the damage from global warming -
EU, UK lead push for electrification as “powerful weapon” against fossil fuels
A group of dozens of countries seeks to build momentum for a COP31 pledge to electrify 35% of global energy use by 2035 as an alternative to fossil fuels
Total’s climate lawsuit
As part of their claim, climate activists and local authorities wanted the court to force TotalEnergies to take stronger action aligning with the 1.5°C warming threshold in the Paris Agreement, including by stopping new fossil fuel projects and reducing production levels.
The lawsuit claim was ruled inadmissible in 2023, but this was overturned the following year. However no public bodies except the city of Paris were allowed to join. A court in Paris finally heard the claim on its merits in March.
Two weeks before the hearing, the French public prosecutor’s office said it agreed with TotalEnergies that the scope of duty of vigilance law did not extend to climate change. But the court had a different view, saying climate risks and impacts do fall within the law’s scope.
As Nigeria rails at loss and damage “mirage”, fund boss assures money is coming
Coming two days after France recorded its hottest-ever day, the court said the law is not intended to make the companies concerned responsible for all climate risks – resulting from all human activity since the industrial revolution – but they must “act according to their situation”.
In TotalEnergies’ case, its oil and gas activities release greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere with resulting negative climate impacts, which must be properly identified in its vigilance plan.
The court also explicitly said that the plan must include scope 3 emissions from the use of products and services by customers, “due in particular to the inherent link between oil and gas production and the combustion of products by users”. This is in line with domestic and international court rulings across the world in recent years.
TotalEnergies was given six months to update the plan. After that, the court will scrutinise whether the measures are adequate, with a hearing already scheduled for 21 January 2027.
Milestone for climate accountability
Théa Bonfour, senior advocacy and litigation officer at NGO Sherpa, which was also involved in the case, said it was a “first important milestone” but she warned that the tribunal will still have to exercise its power to analyse the plan’s details.
However, the court did not agree to a request by the NGOs and the City of Paris for TotalEnergies to completely stop all of its new fossil fuel projects or to cut production by 37% for oil and 25% for gas by 2030.
TotalEnergies was approached for comment but did not respond by the time of publication.
The company could still appeal the decision but, even if it does, it still has to comply with the ruling while the process is ongoing.
COP31 presidency ‘open’ to reflecting Santa Marta in UN climate process, ministers say
Sébastien Duyck, senior attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law, said the ruling is a “key step towards stronger corporate climate accountability”.
“The inclusion of the whole range of emissions attributable to TotalEnergies’ activities in the sphere of responsibility of the company is a critical legal step validating other recent judicial decisions,” said Duyck. “This constitutes a stringent rebuttal of the argument that the responsibility lies solely with consumers.”
Christina Eckes, professor of European law at the University of Amsterdam, said the ruling had increased pressure on polluting companies to justify their business decisions.
“It’s not just TotalEnergies. When you look at the sustainability plans of fossil fuel industries in Europe, they’re mostly scope 1 and 2; you can’t claim to have a sustainability plan if you’re only talking about 10% of your emissions.”
Influential ruling
The Total decision has significant implications for other ongoing lawsuits.
The most important is that brought by a Belgian farmer who is bringing a climate damages claim against TotalEnergies. A decision on the merits was postponed until 9 September so that judges could see the outcome of the French ruling.
A separate duty of vigilance case against TotalEnergies in relation to the East African Crude Oil Pipeline in Uganda is still ongoing at the Paris Judicial Court, after a similar earlier claim was dismissed in 2023. The $4-billion project has been controversial due to its social and environmental impacts.
The post French court rules Total must revise climate plan to account for all emissions appeared first on Climate Home News.
https://www.climatechangenews.com/2026/06/26/fossil-fuel-firm-total-must-account-total-emissions-french-court-lawsuit/
Next week, diplomats from around the world will descend on Yerevan, Armenia, to negotiate a series of decisions under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
Between 19 and 30 October, 196 parties will gather to hammer out the precise wording of the dozens of legal texts that make up the decisions under the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the CBD.
This year’s summit is particularly significant, as it marks the halfway point between the agreement of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and the deadline for achieving its targets.
The CBD has found that countries are currently not on track to meet 22 out of the framework’s 23 targets.
During the fortnight, delegates will also be negotiating decisions relating to the two supplemental protocols to the CBD: the Cartagena Protocol, which covers biosafety; and the Nagoya Protocol, which covers access and benefit-sharing for the use of genetic resources.
(The Cartagena and Nagoya Protocols, which are each governed by a “meeting of the parties”, or “MOP”, have fewer parties than the CBD as a whole, with 173 and 141, respectively.)
Carbon Brief is tracking the progress of countries towards consensus on dozens of negotiating texts using the interactive table below.
The tracker includes texts from the COP, as well as the MOPs for the Cartagena and Nagoya protocols. It also includes draft decisions from the most recent subsidiary body meetings, as these form the starting point for the negotiations in Yerevan.
The CBD has three subsidiary bodies: the subsidiary body on scientific, technical and technological advice (SBSTTA), the subsidiary body on implementation (SBI) and the subsidiary body on article 8(j) and other provisions (SB8J).
SB8J focuses on issues related to the Indigenous peoples and local communities. It was established at COP16 in Cali, Colombia, in 2024.
The first two columns of the interactive tracker list the topic of each agenda item and the relevant body, with subsequent columns including dates, page counts and links to the original documents.
The table is searchable and can be sorted using the arrows in the header.
Areas of disagreement in UN draft texts are denoted by square brackets. Counting the brackets in a particular iteration of a text therefore gives a sense of how far parties are from reaching consensus.
The bracket column is colour-coded, with dark green indicating a low number of brackets and red indicating a high number of brackets remaining.
Texts can also present parties with choices using “options” or alternatives (“alt”), which are counted together in the sixth column of the table.
The key discussions in Yerevan will centre around two agenda items in particular. The first is the global review, which will assess progress towards the GBF and make recommendations for accelerating action.
The second is finance, which can be separated into two parts: resource mobilisation and the financial mechanism. On resource mobilisation, biodiverse global south countries are likely to push for an increased amount of international finance for conservation.
Disagreement over the creation of the financial mechanism led to the suspension of COP16 in Cali in October 2024, as parties failed to find agreement on the mobilisation of finance before the end of the summit.
Global south countries want the establishment of a separate financial mechanism under the control of the CBD; global north countries largely prefer to maintain the existing mechanism, which sits under the Global Environment Facility.
At the resumed session of COP16 in Rome in early 2025, countries agreed on a roadmap that would lead to the establishment of a permanent mechanism.
related
Analysis: Lula presidency saved at least 20,000km2 of Brazilian Amazon since 2022
Why land-use emissions have fallen by a third this century – in six charts
Analysis: 84% of nations miss deadline to identify ‘nature-harming’ subsidies by 2025
UK withdraws millions in funding from world’s second-largest rainforest in Congo
The post Interactive: Tracking negotiating texts at the COP17 biodiversity summit appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Interactive: Tracking negotiating texts at the COP17 biodiversity summit
A beacon of love
On an outer island of Fiji, two thousand nautical miles from Sydney, is a shining light of hope and resilience for our troubled world.
The island of Kioa is home to a Tuvaluan community who migrated from their atoll of Vaitupu in the late 1940s. It is a land of warm hearts, big smiles, and deep cultural roots; a place where the sound of a conch still summons the island together, where islanders paddle out to fish in carved outrigger canoes, and healthy happy children walk barefoot to school.
Here, culture is life. Kioans live sustainably through their traditional knowledge and practices. The island is alive with song, dance and the rhythms of a life tied to the tides, the winds, and the seasons.
Facing the future
Greenpeace has been lucky to have a relationship with Kioa for a number of years now, and we are continually learning from this remarkable community.
Last week, as part of our Voyaging Oceania project, we returned to the island. Our purpose was twofold —- to carry messages from the island to leaders gathering in Nadi this week for the Pacific Pre-COP, and to support the Kioa community in their efforts to improve water security for the island.
Unlike Tuvalu itself, with its eight atolls, Kioa is a mountainous, forested and richly fertile island. It will remain habitable far into the future. Kioans did not initially migrate from Vaitupu due to climate change, but the move was prophetic. They now have a lifeboat.
However, even Kioa faces challenges on our rapidly warming planet, in particular when it comes to water. Climate change is shifting once reliable rainfall patterns. On top of this, the island is already feeling the effect of this year’s intensifying El Niño event, which for Fiji means reduced rainfall and prolonged dry spells.
Right now, fresh water has to be carefully rationed, and is only available for a few hours a day. During last week’s visit aboard our campaigning ship Oceania, Greenpeace was privileged to work with the Kioa community on a new solar-powered water distribution project for the island.
Designed and led by the island, the project involves using a solar pump to move water from a reliable source to a storage tank and then using gravity to distribute the water around the village.
It was a lesson in how local knowledge and ingenuity can be the backbone of today’s climate solutions. To build a dam around the source, the local community knew the exact spot where they could gather gravel at low tide to mix with the cement. They took only what was needed, knowing that all resources must be carefully conserved. Kioa has no roads and no machinery, and it was an all-of-island effort to carry the materials up to the project site, including many heavy bags of sand and rock.
Such projects truly bring to life the vision of a resilient, locally-led, fossil fuel free Pacific.