On August 23, 2017, the village of Bondo, Switzerland, was swept away by stones and sand due to a landslide. ⓒAP Photo Kanderstek, a small town with a population of about 1300 in south-central Switzerland, is famous as a tourist destination thanks to the scenery that only appears on a calendar picture. do. Lake Oeshnen, located above the village, was formed by the flow of glacial water from the surrounding mountains. Said to be the most beautiful lake in the Alps, it is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site. As the town’s main industry is tourism, there is also a town promotion webpage in English. On the first screen, the following guide appears: “At that moment, the scent of Swiss pine permeates the lakeside below the mountain, and the whistle of Marmots can be heard from the ridge. While admiring this vast expanse of nature, you feel safe and secure, surrounded by towering rocky mountains on all sides. That’s why this place has stood the test of time, and that’s why you stay here.” It is a description that goes well with the beautiful photos that have been uploaded together. There is also a village information site for residents, but the atmosphere here is a little different. A warning message in German appears along with a map on the first screen. “The degree of movement is about one centimeter per day over a wide area. In some areas below the western slope, it moved up to 9 cm per day. Sudden, small-scale rockfalls or landslides can happen at any time, but the impact is expected to only affect areas currently permanently banned. Please see the map below for risk levels by region.” The term ‘moving’ in this warning signifies the movement of rocks swaying from the top of Spitzerstein, a 2974 m high rocky mountain that surrounds the village of Kanderstek. One of the major causes of rock migration is climate change. Warming melts the permafrost at the top of the mountain, and the melt water seeps through the cracks in the rocks, which increases internal pressure and pushes the rocks outward. Because of the geological structure of Mt Spitzerstein, rockfall has always occurred. However, the problem is that the pace of change has accelerated rapidly over the past decade. The part where the rock slides the fastest in this mountain is moving at a rate of 6 to 8 m per year, but it is said that there is no part of the Alps that changes as much as this. According to a daily Swissinfo report, to prepare for this, the village of Kanderstek recently built a dam with a width of 10m at a cost of 11.2 million Swiss francs (about 15.5 billion won), and a metal net will soon be installed there. In addition, observation tools using the latest technology have been installed on the mountain to give warning 48 hours before a disaster occurs. The house will have to be abandoned, but it is enough time for the residents to evacuate and save their lives. But it literally only saves lives, there is no other defense. Even if the pouring rocks are caught with dams and nets, it is impossible to prevent secondary debris flow (rock debris flowing down due to weathering) from attacking the village. In the worst-case scenario, about 20 million cubic meters of rock and soil could be poured down. That’s the equivalent of eight pyramids, enough to devour a village. Once you know the situation, modifiers such as ‘safe’, ‘safe’, and ‘unchangeable for centuries’ on the village publicity webpage in English feel like a scam. It is not that they do not understand the plight of the residents or the village government. Landslide hazard warnings are fatal for villages that thrive on tourism. But that is not an excuse to ignore the crisis. Disasters are directly related to life. Wouldn’t Kanderstek tourists have the right to protest the town’s government trying to hide the risk of landslides? What is the role and duty of the government when a natural disaster is predicted? He hides risks to earn tourism profits, but you can refer to the disaster that occurred five years ago in this regard. The largest landslide in Switzerland in the last century, in the town of Bondo. The town of Bondo in southeastern Switzerland is located in the Bondska Valley in the Alps. In August 2017, 4 million cubic meters of rocks and soil were crushed and poured into the village in the Piz Cengalo mountain. 99 buildings were destroyed, half of which were completely destroyed. The damage was 41 million Swiss francs (about 56.8 billion won). Eight hikers, including two Swiss, four Germans and two Austrians, went missing and their bodies were never found. Fortunately, the village suffered a similar landslide in 2012 and was able to evacuate in advance thanks to an automatic warning system, resulting in only this amount of casualties. The main reason for the collapse of Mount Fitzchanggalo is the melting of permafrost due to climate warming. The families of the victims of the Bondo landslide have sued the province of Graubünden, to which the village belongs. The reason is that the necessary safety warning measures were not taken even though the natural disaster was foreseen. “Two weeks before the accident, it was known that the rocks in Fitzchanggalo were in an unstable state, and experts predicted that a massive landslide could occur within weeks or months,” said the family’s lawyer in an interview with public broadcaster SRF. However, the local government did not take safety measures.” After losing their case in the district court of the district of Graubünden, they appealed to the Swiss Federal Court, which in February this year ruled that the state government was at fault. It was said that the opinions of disaster experts should be more actively accepted. Prosecutors are currently re-investigating the state’s negligence. The reinvestigation of the Bondo landslide is unusual. In practice, the government is often reluctant to announce dangers, let alone preventative measures. Compared to pre-industrial times, the average temperature in Switzerland today has risen by 2°C. That’s twice the global average increase. Among the natural disasters caused by climate change, landslides, advections (flows of violently moving mud), and rockfalls are particularly problematic in Switzerland, the country of the Alps. Since 1946, 169 people have died in Switzerland due to landslides. Currently, a total of 336 sites in Switzerland are subject to disaster monitoring, and some of them are being monitored 24 hours a day using radar or GPS sensors. But there is something interesting. The fact that hundreds of sites were under disaster monitoring was revealed by two Sunday newspapers in November 2018 (Le Matin Di Manche and Zontax Zeitung), which were not disclosed to the general public. If the area is dangerous enough to require monitoring, it is common sense to notify the residents and share the monitoring status. Why do you have to hide it? According to the positions of the Swiss provincial governments, which are the subject of surveillance, the reasons are ‘I do not want to instigate fear’ and ‘Because valuable surveillance equipment can be damaged by ordinary people’. This is just an excuse. In reality, the interests of local industries such as tourism, real estate, and architecture collide with citizens’ right to life. Natural disasters caused by climate crises, such as landslides, floods, and heat waves, put personal safety and lives at risk more and more frequently. There are not many ways an individual can respond to this situation. Either they are satisfied with the extent to which they reduce plastic use, use public transport, and reduce their ‘even me’ carbon emissions, or go out into the streets with signs to awaken the public and politicians who are ignorant of the climate crisis, or else give up as natural disasters are force majeure . However, there are others who have taken a different path. These are the people who sued the government for failing to do so, arguing that it is the constitutional duty of the state to protect the lives and health of the people. This is the story of the ‘Swiss Climate Women’s Solidarity’ Members of the Swiss Women’s Solidarity for Climate and Senior Citizens attended a special general meeting held in Bern on May 23, 2017. ⓒGreenpeace The group, which consists of about 2,000 Swiss women aged 64 and over, was accused of negligence in the European Court of Human Rights in December 2020 against the Swiss government. sued with The group most affected by the heat wave caused by the climate crisis is the elderly women, and they argue that their right to life is at risk because the Swiss government has not taken sufficient measures to respond to the climate crisis. The court said it would take the case on May 26, 2021. This is the second climate crisis-related lawsuit in the history of the European Court of Human Rights. There are many lawsuits brought to the European Court of Human Rights, but very few are actually accepted. “Non-response to the climate crisis is a violation of the right to life” How did the Swiss women’s elders’ claims go to the European Court of Human Rights? The fire started in the Netherlands. In 2013, the Urgenda Foundation, a Dutch environmental group, sued the government for not doing enough to combat climate change. It also included calls for measures to reduce Dutch carbon emissions by 40% compared to 1990 levels. The Hague District Court upheld the Urgenda Foundation on June 24, 2015. It is the first case in the world where a court has ruled that a country should respond to the climate crisis. At the time, there was a person who watched this judgment process carefully. It was Anne Marer, a member of the Bern City Council (Green Party), Switzerland. She said that she wanted to achieve similar results in Switzerland, and she founded the Women’s Seniors Solidarity for Lawsuits. It is to use the scientific fact that it is the female elderly population that is most affected by the heat wave in litigation. In November 2016, the Women’s Solidarity for the Elderly submitted a petition to the Swiss government focusing on ‘reducing carbon emissions by 25% by 2020’, but it was rejected. The same petition was filed with the Federal Administrative Court in 2017, but was also rejected. The reason was that ‘women over the age of 64 are not the only ones affected by the climate crisis’. Then, in 2019, the Women’s Solidarity for Senior Citizens took it to the Swiss Federal Supreme Court. ‘It is too early for the judiciary to get involved in this matter. The climate crisis should be resolved through political channels, not legal litigation. In Marer’s view, Swiss judges “did not have the courage to deal with issues of fundamental human rights related to the climate crisis” (in an interview with SwissInfo, December 4, 2020). The reason why the Women’s Solidarity for Senior Citizens sued the Swiss government with the European Court of Human Rights was that Switzerland could not find an answer. It could be years before the European Court of Human Rights decides, but constitutional experts see the ruling likely to set a precedent across Europe on responsibility for the climate crisis. It remains to be seen how effective litigation will be in addressing the climate crisis. “It is worth noting that more and more citizens and non-governmental organizations around the world are turning to courts for climate change justice, and climate change-related disputes are on an unprecedented rise. This type of litigation, which has emerged relatively recently, has become a way to shape public opinion and pressure countries and businesses to deviate from inertia (French author Anne-Sophie Nobel, UNESCO Currie 2019 article ‘Climate Change’) :A new legal topic’).”
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Residents in litigation in the collapsing Alps
