Britain’s Court of Appeal on Thursday ruled in favor of environmental campaigners who oppose the building of a third runway at London’s Heathrow Airport, Europe’s busiest.
The court said that the British government — which approved the Heathrow extension in 2018 after years of delays — had failed to take into account commitments to the Paris Agreement on limiting climate change.
In reaction, triumphant campaigners called on British Prime Minister Boris Johnson — who in 2015 pledged to lie in front of bulldozers to stop Heathrow’s third runway for both environmental and aesthetic reasons — to finally cancel the project.
The legal action against the approval was brought by various London councils, environmental groups, including Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, and London Mayor Sadiq Khan.
They lost at an original hearing in May.
Presenting a summary of the appeal ruling, Lord Justice Keith Lindblom said that two years ago, the government of then-British prime minister Theresa May had given no explanation of how it took into account the 2015 Paris accord — which seeks to cap global warming to less than 2°C from preindustrial levels — on building the new runway.
“The Paris Agreement ought to have been taken into account ... and an explanation given as to how it was taken into account, but it was not,” Lindblom said.
The British government has decided not to appeal the ruling at the Supreme Court.
However, Johnson, who has appeared ambiguous over his once-staunch opposition to the project, might still have to make an official decision on scrapping it.
Heathrow said that it would appeal the ruling.
“Expanding Heathrow, Britain’s biggest port and only hub, is essential to achieving the prime minister’s vision of Global Britain,” the airport said on Thursday.
Following the ruling, Khan called on the government “to abandon plans” for the runway.
“I’m delighted by the decision handed out by the court of appeal,” he told reporters outside the court. “I’ve always said that we’ve got serious consequences about the government’s plan to have a new runway at Heathrow because of the impact in the climate emergency, on the air quality, on noise pollution [and] on the quality of life of Londoners.”
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