Switzerland's court admits civil claims against Holcim for climate harm, setting a precedent for accountability

For the first time in Switzerland a cantonal court has accepted that individuals may bring civil claims against a major corporation for climate-related harm, a decision that could reshape accountability for historic greenhouse gas emissions and bolster a wave of cross-border climate litigation.

On December 22, 2025, the Cantonal Court of Zug admitted all the demands in a lawsuit brought by four fishers from the Indonesian island of Pari against Swiss cement giant Holcim, according to Frontline (The Hindu). The plaintiffs , named in court documents as Ibu Asmania, Pak Arif, Pak Edi, and Pak Bobby , say Holcim’s historic carbon dioxide emissions have materially contributed to sea-level rise that threatens their homes, livelihoods and the partial submergence of Pari. They are seeking costs for flood protection measures and a rapid reduction in Holcim’s CO2 emissions, and are supported by Swiss Church Aid (HEKS/EPER), Indonesian environmental group Wahana Lingkungan Hidup Indonesia (WALHI), and the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), the HEKS statement said.

The Zug court rejected Holcim’s procedural objections, including the argument that climate-protection policy should not be decided in courts and that Pari was inevitably doomed regardless of Holcim’s contributions. The court said that “every single contribution is essential for counteracting climate change,” according to HEKS, and held that the complainants have a right to have their case heard. The ruling is subject to appeal to the High Court of the Canton of Zug.

The plaintiffs’ case rests in part on emissions accounting: historical data from the Carbon Majors database cited by HEKS shows Holcim was responsible for 0.18 per cent of global CO2 emissions from 1854 to 2023, and that since 1950 the company emitted over 7 billion tonnes of CO2 , roughly 0.42 per cent of all global industrial CO2 emissions, or twice Switzerland’s total emissions over the same period, the HEKS report said. The firm is described there as a leading player in cement and concrete and among the world’s top 50 historical emitters.

Legal observers say the Zug decision will reverberate beyond Switzerland. Sebastien Duyck, a senior attorney at the Centre for International Environmental Law (CIEL) who has followed the case, said it showed “climate polluters were not above the law,” Frontline reported. According to Frontline, during the September hearing a Holcim legal representative publicly mocked the complainants by throwing four Swiss francs in the courtroom after one plaintiff described the impacts on their life; that incident was reported by CIEL observers.

The admission of the Holcim case comes amid a broader decade-long surge in climate litigation that began with the 2015 Urgenda victory in the Netherlands and accelerated after a string of high-profile rulings. A Climate Litigation Network report, cited in Frontline, found 3,099 climate-related cases filed across 55 national jurisdictions and 24 international or regional bodies as of June 30, 2025, and said courts and tribunals increasingly framed climate change as a legal duty of governments and, increasingly, of private actors.

Parallel cases in other jurisdictions underline the transnational nature of the emerging jurisprudence. In October and November 2025, 43 farmers from Sindh province in Pakistan announced legal action seeking €1 million in compensation from two major German firms, RWE and Heidelberg Materials, for losses suffered in floods that devastated Pakistan in 2022, The Guardian and Geo.tv reported. The farmers, supported by Medico International, the National Trade Union Federation (NTUF) and HANDS Welfare Foundation, say repeated inundations, most catastrophically in 2010 and 2022, destroyed harvests and livelihoods. Their claim invokes section 823 of the German civil code, which can impose liability for harmful acts, and builds on precedent in the Saul Luciano Lliuya case, where a regional court in Hamm accepted that a company could be held liable under German law for climate-related damage abroad.

Medico and local partners say Pakistan contributes less than 1 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions yet ranks among the countries most affected by extreme weather events; the 2022 floods caused widespread destruction and were estimated to have incurred about $30 billion in damages in some assessments cited by campaigners. According to Carbon Majors figures referenced by campaigners, RWE accounted for 0.38 per cent of historical CO2 emissions from 1854–2023, and Heidelberg Materials for 0.15 per cent in 2023. Both companies have publicly rejected liability; an RWE spokesperson told media that under German law there is no concept of civil “climate liability” and warned of wide-ranging consequences if courts accepted such claims.

The Holcim and Sindh farmers’ actions reflect two complementary strands of climate litigation: demands for prospective remedies , such as injunctions or corporate emission cuts , and claims for retrospective compensation for concrete losses already suffered. The Sindh farmers’ solicitor teams plan to rely on attribution science and expert reports to connect specific flood events to anthropogenic warming, a methodology increasingly deployed in climate tort litigation.

Legal practitioners say courts are now being asked to weigh complex scientific and policy questions about causation, contribution and proportional responsibility. Some judges have embraced that task; others have resisted, citing separation of powers or concerns about imposing open-ended liabilities on corporations or states. In Zug the court explicitly dismissed the argument that reducible action by one company would simply be offset by other producers increasing output, signalling judicial willingness to consider contribution-based liability theories.

Campaigners and lawyers argue that litigation has filled a governance gap left by slow political progress on fossil fuels and inadequate finance for adaptation and loss and damage. The International Court of Justice’s 2025 advisory-like ruling and other high-court decisions have intensified pressure on states and companies to treat climate commitments as enforceable obligations, a point stressed in the Climate Litigation Network’s report cited by Frontline.

Holcim has the opportunity to appeal the Zug decision, and the farmers’ claim in Germany must still be lodged and tested in substantive hearings. Yet lawyers and activists say the procedural successes themselves matter: they allow courts to examine the merits, produce evidentiary records and create jurisprudence that can influence corporate behaviour, regulatory design and future litigation.

For communities on the climate front line, litigation is increasingly framed as a means to secure concrete relief and to compel accountability where political avenues have stalled. “We are very pleased. This decision gives us the strength to continue our fight,” Ibu Asmania said in a statement reported by Frontline. The cases now moving through courts in Zug and Germany will test whether domestic civil litigation can translate scientific attribution and historical emissions data into legal responsibility and reparative remedies for those who have borne climate harms.