On 31 January 2025, the European Court of Human Rights (“ECtHR”, “the Court”) ruled on large-scale environmental pollution caused by the illegal dumping and burning of toxic waste in Italy. In Cannavacciuolo and Others, the Court found that Italy violated its obligations under the right to life, enshrined in Article 2 ECHR. The judgment, spanning more than 500 paragraphs, raises several important issues (see, e.g., here and here). This post examines the Court’s evolving approach to causation in environmental pollution cases. In Cannavacciuolo, the ECtHR significantly relaxed the requirements for proving a causal link between harm and pollution, extending this approach to the right to life. This judgment signals a broader shift toward a precautionary approach, which has now also been established in the context of Article 2 ECHR.
The Applications
The 34 joint applications concerned large-scale illegal dumping, burying, and burning of hazardous waste in Italy’s Terra dei Fuochi (“Land of Fires”) region. A New York Times article quoted a local environmentalist who described how he “had been shocked into awareness about the pollution when lambs with two heads or two tails or one eye started to be born on the family farm”. Unsurprisingly, this environmental catastrophe has serious consequences for human health. The region experiences high mortality rates and an above-average prevalence of cancer, particularly among children.
The applicants, most of whom suffer from cancer or other serious health conditions, alleged that the Italian government had failed to take sufficient measures to safeguard their lives and health. They also claimed the government had neglected to provide adequate information about the pollution, despite being aware of it since at least the 1990s. The Court dismissed the applications submitted by associations representing some of the victims. It furthermore deemed the applications from individuals residing outside the municipalities officially designated as polluted inadmissible. As for the remaining seven admissible applications, the Court found a violation of Article 2 ECHR (right to life) (para. 467). This marks the first time the Court found a violation of the right to life in a case concerning large-scale environmental pollution. It did not, however, consider it necessary to examine the matter separately under Article 8 ECHR (right to private and family life), given that states’ obligations in environmental matters under Articles 2 and 8 ECHR largely overlap (see Brincat and Others v. Malta, paras. 85, 102).
Easing the Causation Requirement
States are obligated to take positive steps to safeguard the health and lives of individuals within their jurisdiction, including by designing and implementing an adequate legislative and administrative framework (KlimaSeniorinnen, para. 538). This is an obligation of conduct, not of result (Kurt v Austria, para 159). The positive obligations under Article 2 ECHR also arise when there is a “real and imminent risk” to a person’s life without having (yet) incurred a life-threatening injury (Tănase v. Romania, paras. 140-141). The risk is “real and imminent” when there is “a serious, genuine and sufficiently ascertainable threat to life, containing an element of material and temporal proximity of the threat to the harm complained of by the applicant” (KlimaSeniorinnen, para 513). The Court has accepted that exposure to pollution, natural disasters, and also climate change are activities generally capable of putting an individual’s life at risk. Whether this risk is “real and imminent” must then be assessed in the individual case.
The assessment usually requires establishing two causal links: First, the applicant must prove a causal relationship between the polluting activity or source and its alleged harmful effects for the obligations to arise. Second, for these obligations to be violated, there must be a link between the measures omitted or taken by the state and the (risk of) harm (on this, see here). The first causation requirement makes it particularly difficult to apply Article 2 ECHR in the context of widespread and complex cases of environmental pollution unless the individual applicant can provide scientific evidence that their individual (life-threatening) health condition resulted directly from the pollution.
Cannavacciuolo, however, is the first time that the threshold of “real and imminent” risk has been found to have been met in a case of widespread and complex environmental pollution. After determining that the illegal and unregulated dumping of toxic waste constitutes an inherently dangerous activity, the Court affirms that there is a “real and imminent risk” to life that triggered the duty to act on the Italian authorities’ part. Notably, it does so without requiring “that the applicants demonstrate a proven link between the exposure to an identifiable type of pollution or even harmful substance and the outset of a specific life-threatening illness or death as a result of it” (paras. 385, 390). Concerning imminence, the Court finds it sufficient that the applicants have resided over a considerable period of time in one of the municipalities identified by the Italian authorities as being affected by the pollution (para. 390).
As Sommerdal points out, the Court generally requires applicants to provide evidence that their health condition resulted from the pollution. However, in more recent cases relating to Article 8 ECHR, the Court has often found it sufficient to establish that the continued exposure to the pollution made the applicants more vulnerable to various illnesses (Locascia and Others v. Italy, para. 130; Kotov and Others v. Russia, para. 107; Tătar v. Romania, paras. 106-107). In KlimaSeniorinnen, the Court further highlighted that, given the special nature of climate change, causation should not be assessed based on “a strict conditio sine qua non requirement” (para. 439). In Cannavacciuolo, this broader approach to causation is now extended to the right to life.
Towards a Precautionary Approach
The Court emphasises that “in line with a precautionary approach, (…) the fact that there was no scientific certainty about the precise effects the pollution may have had on the health of the applicant cannot negate the existence of a protective duty” (Cannavacciuolo, para. 391). This signals a shift toward a more permanent adoption of the precautionary approach, which was previously only briefly mentioned in Tătar (para. 120). The Court’s increasing reliance on this principle is further evidenced by its more flexible approach to causation in Article 8 ECHR cases.
Rooted in environmental law, the precautionary approach (or principle) is enshrined in numerous treaties including the UNFCCC, and the Stockholm Convention of Persistent Organic Pollutants. At its core, the principle holds that “[w]here there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation” (Principle 15 Rio Declaration). According to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, it is on its way to becoming a part of customary international law (Advisory Opinions on Responsibilities and Obligations in the Area, para. 135; and Climate Change, para. 213). In the realm of human rights law, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights recognised in 2017 that states must apply the precautionary principle (Advisory Opinion OC-23/17, para. 180).
Integrating a precautionary approach into human rights law requires states to take preventive action despite scientific uncertainty. However, ensuring the effective realisation of these rights also demands a more flexible standard and burden of proof for applicants alleging a violation. In this context, lowering the causation threshold also aligns with the ECtHR’s established principle that the Convention aims to secure rights that are “practical and effective” (Airey v Ireland, para. 24).
A Change for Climate Change?
The Court justifies its new approach to causation partly due to the nature of the pollution. Unlike past cases with single, identifiable sources in limited geographical areas, the situation in the Terra dei Fuochi was characterised by a “multiplicity of sources of pollution which are very different as to their type, their geographical extension, the pollutants released, the ways in which individuals came into contact with them, and their environmental impact” (Cannavacciuolo, para. 384). This reasoning echoes KlimaSeniorinnen, where the Court distinguished climate change from previous environmental harm cases due to its lack of a single identifiable source, a complex chain of consequences, and its cross-border nature (paras. 415–416). This similarity was also noted by Judges Krenc and Serghides in their individual opinions.
However, unlike in KlimaSeniorinnen, the applicants in Cannavacciuolo already suffer from serious health conditions, likely caused by the hazardous activity, even if not scientifically proven in each case. So far, all environmental cases where a violation of Article 2 ECHR has been successfully invoked have involved the death of a close relative of the applicant (Öneryıldız v. Turkey, Budayeva and Others v. Russia, Özel and Others v. Turkey). In other cases where the applicant did not (yet) suffer from a “life-threatening” condition that could be linked at least prima facie to the pollution, the Court denied the applicability of Article 2 at the outset and instead opted for Article 8 ECHR (Brincat, para. 84; KlimaSeniorinnen, para 536).
Consequently, for climate-related cases to meet the Article 2 ECHR threshold, applicants would need to demonstrate a “serious risk of a significant decline in a person’s life expectancy owing to climate change” (KlimaSeniorinnen, para 513). This suggests that the Court’s more flexible approach to causation in Cannavacciuolo is unlikely to alter its stance on Article 2 ECHR in climate cases unless applicants can demonstrate concrete and sufficiently severe (i.e., life-threatening) harm.
Conclusions
Cannavacciuolo marks the first application of the precautionary approach within Article 2 ECHR, easing the burden of proving causation in large-scale environmental harm cases. This shift allows claims involving remote but serious risks in the context of large-scale environmental harm to be examined under the right to life. This development is significant, as the right to life is often considered “fundamental” and the cornerstone of all other human rights (Human Rights Committee, General Comment No 36, para. 2). Cannavacciuolo therefore illustrates how integrating principles from other “areas” of international law can strengthen human rights protection. It also aligns with a broader trend toward interpreting the right to life more expansively (ibid., para. 3). However, this shift is unlikely to alter the Court’s approach to climate-related cases.
