Melbourne: The Australian government on Monday began its legal challenge to a Federal Court’s landmark decision that it has a duty of care to protect children from future personal injury caused by climate change, according to media reports.
In May, Anjali Sharma, a 17-year-old high-school student of Indian origin from Melbourne and seven other teenage environmentalists, led the legal battle against the Australian government.
Sharma and the group had argued the continued emission of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere would drive intense bushfires, floods, storms and cyclones and leave them vulnerable to injury, sickness, economic loss and even death towards the end of this century, news.com.au reported.
They urged the court to prevent Environment Minister Sussan Ley from approving a proposal to expand the Vickery coal mine in northern New South Wales.
In his ruling, Justice Mordecai Bromberg approved the extension of the coal mine project.
However, he did find that the minister had “a duty to take reasonable care to avoid causing personal injury” to children when she decided on the project extension under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC Act), a report in news.com.au said.
The ruling was heralded as a significant win for the teenagers and the group of climate activists around the world.
Ley has since given the nod for the mine’s expansion.
For Sharma, it was the concern for the environment, her family and future generations, which fuelled her legal charge against the Australian government, a Sydney Morning Herald report said. Born in India, Sharma and her family moved to Australia when she was barely 10-months-old. Her relatives are farmers, who hail from Lucknow.
Growing up, she had heard about global warming and decided to seek more information by watching Youtube videos, the report said.
“Growing up in Australia I consider myself really fortunate,” she said. “I got an education that helped me make sense of what was happening,” Sharma was quoted as saying in the report.
