This project was funded by the Federal Environment Agency and the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Climate Action, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety. The funds are made available by resolution of the German Bundestag. The EEB is responsible for the content of this publication.
Eleven years after Volkswagen’s emissions fraud came to light, a consumer’s compensation claim in a German court has produced something few expected: the first recognition of the rights of nature by a German court. Here is how one of Europe’s biggest green corruption scandals ended up nudging EU law in a more ecocentric direction.
What are the Rights of Nature?
Rights of Nature is an ecocentric approach to law. It aims to rebalance our legal and governance frameworks so that nature’s interests count alongside human ones. Yet, arguably, the main reason for granting rights to nature is also a human one: our own health and survival. It is precisely this relationship between human rights and the rights of nature that allowed a ruling from a German court to make history. And it all started with a case about diesel emissions connected to Dieselgate, one of the biggest green corruption scandals in Europe in recent years.
Dieselgate in a nutshell: eleven years on, still scandalous
Eleven years have passed since Dieselgate came to light in 2015, so a quick reminder is warranted. That year, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) revealed that the Volkswagen Group had intentionally programmed millions of its diesel vehicles with hidden “defeat devices”. This illegal software could detect when a vehicle was undergoing laboratory emissions testing and artificially reduce its nitrogen oxide (NOx) output to pass regulatory limits. On the road, in normal driving, the same cars emitted up to 40 times the legal standard.
Once the fraud was exposed, VW admitted that 11 million cars worldwide, including eight million in Europe, had been fitted with the software. The harm was threefold: to human health, through air pollution; to climate targets, through greenhouse gas emissions; and to consumers, who had bought cars that were not what they were sold as. The Court of Justice of the European Union has since made clear, in Case C-100/21, that such defeat devices are illegal and that affected consumers are entitled to compensation.
And it was precisely one such consumer who went to the District Court in Erfurt, Germany, to claim compensation, initiating a proceeding that would culminate in the recognition of the rights of nature.
The case that put Erfurt at the forefront of Rights of Nature in the EU
In August 2024, the Erfurt District Court (Landgericht) became the first German court to recognise the rights of nature, in case 8 O 1373/21.
The judge, Dr Martin Borowsky, interpreted the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (in particular Articles 2 and 3(1) in conjunction with Article 37) to extend its protections beyond humans to “ecological persons”. The rights of nature were neither the main subject of the case nor the primary legal basis for the claim, which, again, concerned compensation for a customer who had unknowingly bought a car fitted with an illegal defeat device. But the court nonetheless established the rights of ecological persons and used them as an additional justification for its decision.
How did the judge get there? He read the Charter as a “living instrument”, adaptable to contemporary threats, which allowed the court to recognise nature’s right to exist, regenerate and preserve its ecosystems. This fits into a broader tradition of an evolutive and dynamic approach to the law that judges of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) often adopt, not least when ruling on environmental matters. The approach is often labelled judicial activism: in a nutshell, the philosophy that courts can (and should) go beyond a narrow reading of the law to consider the broader societal implications of their decisions. Unsurprisingly, detractors tend to use the term pejoratively.
Part of the judge’s argument rests on language. Many versions of the Charter, including the German and even the English, do not use the word “human” (“Mensch” in German) as the subject of rights. The English text says “everyone”; the German and several other versions say something closer to “every person” (“Jede Person”). In the judge’s view, this leaves room for the Charter’s rights to encompass more than just humans. After all, in traditional legal speak, persons can be natural persons (humans) or legal persons (usually corporations, NGOs and the like).
The judge also argued that recognising nature’s rights supports Article 1 of the Charter, which guarantees human dignity, as well as its preamble, which stresses our responsibilities and duties towards fellow human beings, the human community and future generations. Ensuring that people can live freely and with dignity in a sustainable environment, the reasoning goes, applies not only now but also in the future.
So, what does this mean for the Rights of Nature in Europe?
The first takeaway is that the impacts of environmental crime are long-lasting, its victims are many, and our legal systems are underequipped to rule on environmental damage of this magnitude. Eleven years on, consumers are still looking for justice. And while VW has paid billions in fines, penalties and settlements, the climate, air pollution and human health impacts of its fraud will never be truly offset; they are not something you can simply “fix”. In the Erfurt judgment, the car buyer was awarded €6,670 in compensation. The damage to our climate and health can never be compensated in the same way.
Secondly, this ruling shows better than most how creativity in the exercise of judicial discretion can move legal culture forward. The Erfurt judge’s reasoning is in line with the central aim of ecocentric law: that in the face of urgent ecological crises like climate change and biodiversity loss, recognising nature’s rights can be a useful tool. Even though the rights of nature were not central to this case, exploring them helps steer future rulings away from a purely anthropocentric view that disregards long-term impacts.
The judgment also drew on developments in the EU and beyond to conclude that granting legal personhood to ecological entities aligns with the Charter’s concept of humanity. The court cites Spain’s Mar Menor saltwater lagoon, which has been granted legal personhood, as well as examples from the Global South, the USA and New Zealand where the inherent rights of nature are recognised and enforced through constitutional law, legislation or case law. These references are hardly surprising: Article 53 of the Charter requires comparative law to be taken into account in its interpretation.
With this ruling, the Erfurt District Court became the first European court to affirm that nature is not merely an object, but may be a subject with rights of its own, rights that climate change can in turn harm. Whether it is truly an ecocentric decision is arguable, since it also rests on the idea that environmental preservation matters because it is necessary to protect the human rights of current and future generations. The EU Charter of Fundamental Rights remains a human rights instrument. But forward-thinking legal reasoning like Erfurt’s can move Europe towards a legal system where the long-term and systemic environmental impacts of crimes like Dieselgate, and of much else besides, are properly taken into account.