SC accepts seven-year-old girl’s climate change plea

Karachi

Holding the federal and provincial governments responsible for failing to respect the right to life, a seven-year-old girl’s lawsuit challenging the use of fossil fuels was declared fit for hearing in the Supreme Court (SC) on Wednesday.

The girl was allowed to file the plea in the original jurisdiction of the court; the judge directed the office to tag the case of the petitioner along with other environment related cases being heard.

Petitioner Rabab Ali had filed the case through her father Qazi Ali Athar maintaining that both the governments had violated the public’s trust and the youngest generation’s fundamental right to life, ensured in the constitution, through exploitation and continued promotion of fossil fuels, in particular dirty coal.

The counsel for the petitioner maintained that Pakistan was rich in renewable energy resources such as solar and wind, and these resources were more than enough to meet the energy requirements of not only the current but also the country’s future generations.

However, the federal and provincial governments were exploiting Pakistan’s most environmentally degrading and carbon intensive fuels - low-grade coal from the Thar Coal Reserves - in violation of the Pakistanis constitutionally protected right to life, he further argued. 

The registrar of the SC had initially returned the case observing that according to SC’s Order VII Rule 5 the petition could not be entertained since the instant petition was neither filed by the petitioner in person, nor filed by an advocate-on-record duly appointed by the party; besides suo moto cases on the relevant subject were already in court for adjudication.

However, a three-member bench of the SC, headed by Chief Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali, observed that the petitioner could file the petition in through an attorney and directed the office to tag the case with identical environment cases.