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How Swiss women won a landmark climate case for Europe - podcast

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"It took me a while until the penny dropped that we'd actually won."

Elisabeth Stern, 76, is a climate activist with the KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz (Senior Women for Climate Protection Switzerland), a campaign group of 2,400 older Swiss women.

In a case at the European court of human rights, the group argued that older women were more likely to die in heatwaves, and that the Swiss government was not doing enough to curb carbon emissions.

"We all know the climate is changing," Stern tells Hannah Moore. "But the government has to do something to protect the people during those very, very hot days, right? And making sure that we don't have more and more hot days like that. So every country has to make a contribution, which Switzerland is not doing."

Last week the group won the case. The court ruled that the government's weak climate policies violated fundamental human rights.

The journalist Isabella Kaminski tells Hannah about the ruling, and what it means for future climate cases.

Photograph: Christian Hartmann/Reuters

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