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On the 27th of February, the UK Court of Appeal ruled that the government's decision to allow the expansion of Heathrow Airport was unlawful because the government had not taken its commitments made in Parliament under the Paris Climate Agreement into account.

The transport secretary, Grant Shapps, has said that the government will not challenge the decision in the Supreme Court, although the Heathrow chief executive John Holland-Kaye indicated that the airport would be seeking to challenge the ruling. (source: BBC)

Is this the first international example of a national government being held to account by the judiciary based on commitments made in an international climate agreement?

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No, it's definitely not the first case. The Dutch government lost a case in 2015, upheld in the Dutch Supreme Court in 2019. It's generally known as the Urgenda case.

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