San Francisco Frontiers - Peru farmer in German court battle with energy giant

Saul Luciano Lliuya, 44, argues that electricity producer RWE -- one of the world's top emitters of climate-altering carbon dioxide -- must share the cost of protecting his hometown Huaraz from a swollen glacier lake at risk of overflowing from melting snow and ice.

He wants the German company to pay 17,000 euros ($18,400) towards flood defences for his community, arguing that the fossil fuels the firm uses to generate electricity make it partly responsible for the flood risk.

"What I am asking is for the company to take responsibility for part of the construction costs," he said at a press conference in Lima earlier this month.

"I have full confidence in these processes."

However much confidence Lliuya has in proceedings, they have moved at a glacial pace.

He first filed a lawsuit in 2015 but a court in the western German city of Essen, where RWE is headquartered, dismissed it the following year.

However, in 2017 a higher court in the city of Hamm, also in western Germany, allowed an appeal.

After a delay due to the Covid pandemic, hearings are scheduled from Monday to Wednesday, and Lliuya will be attending.

"I would never have thought that it would all take so long," Lliuya told Germanwatch, a German environmental NGO supporting him in the case.

- 'Fair contribution' -

The hearing will ask if Lliuya's property in Peru's Ancash region is at substantial risk of flooding, examining evidence collected by court-appointed experts who travelled to the area in 2022.

If confirmed, a subsequent hearing would look at the question of RWE's responsibility.

Lliuya bases his claim on a 2014 study that concluded RWE was responsible for 0.47 percent of all global carbon emissions since the start of the industrial era.

RWE, which has never operated in Peru, should pay that share of the 3.5 million euros it would cost to lower the waters of Lake Palcacocha, he says.

Founded in 1898, RWE power plants today use a variety of power sources including solar, wind, gas and coal.

"It is time for companies like RWE to make a fair contribution to the costs of the damage they have helped to cause," said Francesca Mascha Klein, legal officer at Germanwatch.

RWE says a court ruling in favour of Lliuya would set a precedent of holding people responsible under German law for actions that have environmental consequences far outside the country.

"We think that is legally inadmissible and the wrong way to address this issue socially and politically," a spokesman said.

Dismissing the case in 2015, the Essen court said that it was impossible to draw a link between particular emissions and particular damage.

The Hamm hearing might be the first stage towards overturning that opinion at a time when 43 climate-damage cases are ongoing worldwide, according to Zero Carbon Analytics, a not-for-profit research group.

Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, the law firm representing RWE, says that there could be major implications: "The sum in dispute may be less than 20,000 euros. But the precedent-setting potential is clear."

W.Thompson--SFF