Court orders S Korea to specify plans to cut carbon emissions through 2049

South Korea's Constitutional Court on Thursday ordered the government to back its climate goals with more concrete plans for action through 2049, handing a partial victory to climate campaigners who say the country's failure to cut emissions faster amounts to a violation of their rights.

The court, which weighs the constitutionality of laws, issued the assessment while ruling on four climate cases raised by 254 plaintiffs, including many young people who were children or teenagers when they began filing the complaints against the government and lawmakers in 2020.

They argued that South Korea's current goal of cutting carbon emissions by 35 per cent from 2018 levels by 2030 is inadequate to manage the impact of climate change and that such objectives weren't backed by sufficient implementation plans.

They also pointed out that the country has yet to establish plans to reduce carbon emissions after 2031, despite its outstanding goals of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050. The plaintiffs claim that South Korea's allegedly lax climate policies violate their human rights by leaving them vulnerable to future deteriorations in the environment and climate-related harm.

The court did not require South Korea's government to set up a more ambitious 2030 target under its carbon neutrality act and also rejected the plaintiffs' calls for more specific plans to ensure implementation, saying that they failed to demonstrate that the policy was unconstitutional.

However, the court did uphold the plaintiffs' argument that the country needed to establish plans for cutting emissions from 2031 to 2049 and ordered the government to modify the carbon neutrality law by February 28, 2026, to include such plans.

The South Korean government didn't immediately comment to the ruling.