Page - 477 - in Loss and Damage from Climate Change - Concepts, Methods and Policy Options

20 TheCaseofHuaraz:FirstClimateLawsuit onLoss… 477 Fig.20.1 LocationofLakePalcacochaand thecityofHuaraz. SourceRivaset al. (2015) 20.2 TheQuestionofCausality Foranyclaimbasedon§1004BGBalegallyrelevantcausallinkhastobeestablished between the respective activity of the defendant and the nuisance suffered by the plaintiff. The claimasserts that such a causal link canbe establishedbetweenCO2 emissionsgeneratedby thepowerplants operatedbyRWEand the imminent harm totheclaimant’sproperty. InGermanCivilLawthetest forcausality is the“conditio sinequanon”rule:Accordingly,causalityisestablishedifacertainconsequencehad notoccurred fullyorpartially “but for” the said activity.Additionally, theprinciple of “adequacy” has to be fulfilled. Consequences which are so unlikely that their occurrence reasonablycannotbeanticipated, arenot imputed. Causality in the Huaraz Case is strongly linked to scientific confidence as established e.g. by the assessments of the International Panel of Climate Change (IPCC 2013; Cramer et al. 2014). As shown in Fig. 20.3 of the IPCCReport of 2014, buildingon its detection and attribution framework (Cramer et al. 2014), the IPCC assigned high confidence that glacial retreat in South America is linked to anthropogenicclimatechange (item1 in thefigure;Magrinet al. 2014).