Tournai (Belgium) (AFP) – A Belgian judge will rule Wednesday in a closely watched case pitting French oil giant TotalEnergies against a farmer seeking compensation for damage to his farm caused by climate change. Hugues Falys, a farmer from Belgium’s western Hainaut region, was backed by environmental groups including Greenpeace in the David-versus-Goliath case they hope could prove a turning point in the climate fight.
Together they took TotalEnergies to court on the grounds the French group is Belgium’s leading refiner and distributor of petroleum products, launching the country’s first climate case brought against a multinational company. The plaintiffs argue the firm can be held liable for global warming because of emissions generated when its products are burned — a claim rejected by TotalEnergies which accuses pressure groups of “instrumentalising the judiciary.”
The lawsuit was filed in 2024 before the Tournai business court in western Belgium, and argued over a series of hearings between November and January, with a verdict due at 2:00 pm (1300 GMT) on Wednesday. “The judges have everything they need to make the right decision,” Falys told AFP. “But it won’t be black and white, given the number of issues to be decided,” added the farmer, who also serves as spokesman for an agricultural union.
Contacted by AFP, TotalEnergies declined to comment ahead of the ruling. Falys is seeking 130,000 euros ($150,000) in damages for four extreme weather events that struck his farm between 2016 and 2020. First, a storm destroyed his strawberry and potato crops, then three periods of drought hurt fodder production, affecting cattle in turn. But the farmer and his backers are also seeking much broader action from TotalEnergies on countering climate change — notably for it to stop investing in new fossil-fuel projects.
The goals of the lawsuit are “reparation and transformation,” said Belgium’s human rights league (LDH), which is backing the complaint alongside Greenpeace and food-rights organization FIAN. Making its case in court, the company called it “absurd” to single out a particular firm over the pace of the energy transition — arguing that it accounts for less than two percent of the oil and gas sector.
“It’s a bit easy to blame energy producers for pollution and warming,” argued company lawyer Francoise Labrousse back in December, stressing the overarching role of governments in steering climate policy. “TotalEnergies doesn’t sell tractors, cars or boilers,” Labrousse argued, describing the group’s strategy to meet the EU’s goal of carbon neutrality by 2050 as “ambitious and effective.”
TotalEnergies is a frequent target of climate and human rights activists, along with other oil giants. In 2021, Dutch courts issued a landmark ruling ordering Anglo-Dutch giant Shell to cut its net carbon emissions, finding they contributed to global warming and its harmful effects. But the judgement was overturned three years later, when an appeals court found that an NGO and individual citizens could not make such demands. The case, known as “People vs. Shell”, is now before the Dutch Supreme Court.
© 2024 AFP
