Cannavacciuolo and others v Italy

The European Court of Human Rights (“ECtHR”) has handed down an important judgment in this high-profile case concerning the illegal dumping and burning of toxic waste in the “Terra dei Fuochi” area of Campania in Italy.

In one of the first such findings, the Court applied positive obligations under Article 2 of the ECHR to a case involving large-scale environmental pollution (at [387]-[388]). It concluded that the Italian state had acted in breach of Article 2 by failing to take adequate measures to address illegal waste disposal in the Campania region, and to prevent risks to the health and lives of the inhabitants of that region (at [394]-[468]). In particular, the Court relied upon a precautionary approach to find that “the fact that there was no scientific certainty about the precise effects the pollution may have had on the health of a particular applicant cannot negate the existence of a protective duty […]” (at [391]).

The Court also adopted a relatively narrow approach to standing, (i) rejecting the broader approach to standing for representative associations in Verein Klimaseniorinnen Schweiz and others v. Switzerland (Application no. 53600/20); confining that to cases concerning “climate change” at [202]-[221]) and (ii) limiting ‘victim status’ to those individual applicants who were residents of the specific administrative areas which were designated as polluted by the authorities (at [248]), in the absence of substantive findings of the impacts on other areas (at [405], and [410]-[411]).

Finally, for the first time, the Court invoked the ‘pilot judgment’ procedure under Article 46 of the Convention in the environmental context (at [487]-[503]).

Ravi Mehta and Gayatri Sarathy intervened on behalf of ClientEarth in the proceedings.

The judgment may be found here.