Gerry Liston, one of GLAN's lawyers, said that if the case was successful it would be up to national courts to enforce the rulings and that they would be provided with a roadmap to ensure enforcement was effective.
One of the six, Andre Oliveira , previously told Reuters their goal was to force governments to “do what they promised they would do”, referring to the 2015 Paris Agreement to cut emissions to limit global warming to 2 degrees and ideally 1.5 degrees. Current policies would fail to meet either goal, according to the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Mr Agostinho and three other applicants are from the central Portuguese region of Leiria, where two wildfires killed more than 100 people in 2017. Mr Liston acknowledged “taking on the legal teams of over 30 very well-resourced countries” would not be easy.