Saúl Lliuya

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Saúl Luciano Lliuya (born 1980 or 1981) is a Peruvian mountain guide and farmer. He became internationally known since he accused the German energy group RWE of joint responsibility for global warming in 2015 and sued him for financial participation in protective measures against expected climate damage in his home country.

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Map with Laguna Palcacocha (top right), Cojup Valley and urban area of ​​Huaraz (left, yellow)

Lliuya lives in the city of Huaraz with a population of 120,000 . In 1941 1,800 people died there as a result of a glacier run and 1,500 families were left homeless after an earthquake caused a large section of glacier to fall into Lake Palcacocha and a dam broken.

In recent times it has been a. higher temperatures lead to increased melting of the glaciers in the Cordillera Blanca . Between 1987 and 2010 the glacier area in the catchment area of the Río Quilcay decreased by about 25%. The glaciers belonging to this catchment area and draining into the Palcacocha have also retreated significantly. The volume of the lake has increased 34-fold compared to 1970, it now contains approx. 17 million m 3 more water than before the disaster of 1941. For Huaraz the lake continues to represent a high risk of flooding. A computer simulation of the University of Texas found that a high tidal wave could occur and submerge these parts of the Huaraz metropolitan area up to 10 m.

The population feared another flood disaster. Lliuya invested the equivalent of 6,400 euros for the flood protection of his house.

Lawsuit against RWE

In March 2015, Saúl Lliuya drew the world's attention to the threat situation at Lake Palcacocha by making RWE jointly responsible for the situation in an open letter. Together with his lawyer Roda Verheyen, he argues that RWE, as the operator of coal and gas-fired power plants, is one of the world's largest emitters of CO 2 and is therefore jointly responsible for the climate change that is leading to the melting of the glacier. RWE is responsible for 0.47% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Accordingly, RWE should also pay half a percent of the necessary protective measures in its community. Lliuya demanded compensation from RWE for his own expenses and an additional 17,000 euros. According to the German development and environmental organization Germanwatch , in a letter dated at the end of April 2015, the group denied that there was a legal basis for the claim and rejected any responsibility for the facts described.

On November 24, 2015, Saúl Lliuya filed a lawsuit against RWE with the Essen Regional Court for the total amount of 23,700 euros claimed. In doing so, he relied on liability for interference as the legal basis. The applicability of German law results from the Rome II Ordinance (2007), according to which in the event of environmental damage - this also includes a disadvantageous change in the natural resource water - the injured party between the place of action (Germany) and the place where the damage occurs ( Peru), can choose. The question of causality is considered the biggest hurdle for the plaintiffs. Scientifically, the connection between greenhouse gas emissions and global glacier melt is well established, but the attribution of the risk of a single event to climate change and, legally, the attribution to a single emitter are problematic .

Despite the comparatively small sum, the lawsuit is viewed as explosive, as it could create a precedent with serious consequences . Germanwatch took over the costs of the plaintiff's legal proceedings, which "wants to influence the international climate negotiations with this model trial ".

In its statement of defense in 2016, RWE AG denied both its own responsibility for climate damage and the alleged risk of flooding. In addition, RWE assumes that such a liability suit is not provided for in the German legal system because of a global and diverse phenomenon .

On December 15, 2016, the district court dismissed the lawsuit because there was "no linear causal chain between the source of greenhouse gases and the damage". A subsequent appeal to the Hamm Higher Regional Court was successful; the court decided to take evidence on November 30, 2017. According to Germanwatch, in February 2018 the court rejected a counter-presentation by RWE to this decision. With regard to the numerous alleged perpetrators of climate change, the court stated: "The existence of several interferers cannot be used to infer the impossibility of troubleshooting." In March 2018, the court also rejected a second counter-submission by RWE, so that the evidence was taken could be continued.

Honors

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ elEconomista.es: Un campesino peruano se enfrenta a los culpables del deshielo de los Andes - EcoDiario.es. December 8, 2015, accessed September 15, 2019 (Spanish).
  2. ↑ a b Marcelo Somos-Valenzuela, Rachel E. Chisolm, Denny S. Rivas, Cesar Portocarrero and Daene C. McKinney: Modeling a glacial lake outburst flood process chain: the case of Lake Palcacocha and Huaraz, Peru . In: Hydrology and Earth-System Sciences . tape 20 , 2016, doi : 10.5194 / hess-20-2519-2016 .
  3. ↑ a b c d Fernando Iwasaki: El ciudadano Saúl Lliuya contra el calentamiento global . El País , March 29, 2018.
  4. ↑ A. Juricova and S. Fratianni: Climate change and its relation to the fluctuation in glacier mass balance in the Cordillera Blanca, Peru: a review . In: AUC Geographica . tape 53 , no. 1 , June 2018, doi : 10.14712 / 23361980.2018.10 .
  5. ^ Adam Emmer: Glacier Retreat and Glacial Lake Outburst Floods (GLOFs) . In: Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Natural Hazard Science . 2017, doi : 10.1093 / acrefore / 9780199389407.013.275 .
  6. ↑ Adam Emmer, Jan Klime, Martin Mergili, Vít Vilímek and Alejo Cochachin: 882 lakes of the Cordillera Blanca: An inventory, classification, evolution and assessment of susceptibility to outburst floods . In: Catena . No. 147 , 2016, doi : 10.1016 / j.catena.2016.07.032 .
  7. ↑ a b c Peruvian farmer achieves partial success against RWE . Zeit Online , November 13, 2017.
  8. ↑ a b c d e Chris Köhler, Ivo Maruczyk: RWE defends itself against climate action - the court has to comment again ( memento from July 17, 2018 in the Internet Archive ). br.de, February 1, 2018.
  9. ^ Peruvian farmer demands climate compensation from German company. In: The Guardian, March 16, 2015.
  10. ↑ Peruano reclama a empresa alemana por desglaciación en Huaraz . In: La Republica, March 16, 2015.
  11. ↑ Damage from climate change Peruvian farmer threatens to take legal action against RWE . In: Handelsblatt, March 16, 2015.
  12. ↑ Christoph Seidler: - Lawsuit against the German energy company Now pay, RWE . Spiegel Online, December 8, 2015.
  13. ↑ Andreas Mihm: Peruvians are suing RWE for climate damage. In: faz.net. November 24, 2015, accessed May 18, 2018 .
  14. ^ Anne Kling: The climate action against RWE - The assertion of climate damage through private law . In: KJ - Critical Justice . tape 51 , no. 2 , 2018, p. 215 , doi : 10.5771 / 0023-4834-2018-2-213 .
  15. ^ Lawsuit against RWE - "We want to influence the climate negotiations" . Spiegel Online , November 10, 2017.
  16. ↑ The court makes it clear: companies can be held accountable for climate impacts . Press release from Germanwatch, February 15, 2018.
  17. ↑ Court confirms: companies liable for climate impacts (amerika21 February 17, 2018)
  18. ^ "Climate action": RWE fails again with an attempt to avert the taking of evidence . Germanwatch press release from March 14, 2018.
  19. ↑ Peruvian farmer receives Kassel Citizen Prize. Süddeutsche Zeitung , May 29, 2018, accessed on August 26, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Lliuya, Saúl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lliuya, Saúl Luciano
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Peruvian mountain guide and farmer
DATE OF BIRTH 1980 or 1981