Jacobabad (Pakistan) (AFP) – In the middle of rice fields and fields in Pakistan, farmers are trying to write a new page in climate action by demanding that large Western companies compensate them for the “apocalyptic” floods of the summer of 2022.

Published on: 09/11/2026 - 18:18

AFP went to meet some of the 39 farmers from the province of Sindh, in the south of the country, involved in this innovative complaint, including Abdul Hafeez Khoso, 43 years old. He himself went to lodge a complaint in Heidelberg in Germany, and remains marked by the vision of immense factories.

“They spread pollution: in the sky, there are no borders, it can go anywhere,” he explains. “The problem concerns the whole world, so it must be solved on a global scale.”

The companies targeted are giants, the energy group RWE and the cement manufacturer Heidelberg Materials.

It is one of the first global attempts to seek compensation from polluting companies for victims of disasters worsened by climate change.

Shell and the Swiss cement manufacturer Holcim are also targeted in England and Switzerland for disasters in the Philippines, Brazil (Shell) and Indonesia (Holcim).

The two German companies are targeted because a resounding judgment last year in Germany against RWE opened the way for these lawsuits. And because they are among the largest historical emitters of greenhouse gases in Europe.

CO2, illegal?

The plaintiffs, supported by Pakistani and German NGOs, argue that emissions from RWE and Heidelberg Materials - estimated at 0.68% and 0.12% of historic global industrial emissions respectively - have contributed to climate change, and therefore to the torrential rains that washed away their crops, their livestock and their homes in 2022.

“It was a scene of apocalypse. Even our elders had never experienced such bad weather,” Mr. Khoso, who lives in the Jacobabad district with his wife and their young child, told AFP. “We had nothing left.”

The two companies reject the civil procedure altogether and argue that their activities are legal.

“We always blame natural disasters, and sometimes we blame God, but science tells us that climate change is increasing the risks and intensity of extreme weather events,” says Mir Keerio of the Pakistani Hands Foundation, which mobilized villagers for the complaint.

Over the past ten years, a number of states have been ordered by judges to strengthen their climate policies. Increasingly, NGOs and lawyers are attacking companies.

But none has yet been obliged to compensate people affected by climate disasters in proportion to its own contribution to warming.

The German farmers' lawyer, Roda Verheyen, relies on the German precedent of 2025, in the case of the Peruvian Saúl Luciano Lliuya, whom she already defended, against RWE. He did not get any money but the court ruled that German civil law allowed climate compensation to be claimed from companies responsible for cross-border nuisances.

On the legal merits, the lawyer goes further by accusing the companies of “wrongful behavior”.

“Large companies have known about the general consequences of climate change since the 1960s,” Roda Verheyen told AFP.

“They should have done their due diligence and, at a minimum, tried to reduce their emissions, which they didn’t do enough.”

Fear of the rainy season

Four years later, Munawar Khatoon, one of the few women landowners in this conservative region, remembers how floods hit just before the wheat harvest, wiping out her family's main source of income.

“We wonder how the next generation will live if this continues,” this 43-year-old woman told AFP in her village of Usman Samtio.

“Now we are afraid when the rainy season comes.”

In neighboring Dadu district, Abdul Khalique Laghari joined the complaint. Here is his damage: $14,000 worth of property, including his house, 16 hectares of crops and livestock.

“Even today, we are unable to repay our debts,” says this 55-year-old man, who says he is constantly called by his creditors. “This is causing us great psychological suffering,” he said, pointing to crumbling walls and the remains of dilapidated houses damaged by floods.

Heidelberg Materials told AFP that companies could not be retroactively required to comply with different rules.

RWE calls the procedure "a new attempt to transfer climate policy claims to German courts."

“It would be contradictory for the State to authorize CO2 emissions, regulate them or even require them in certain cases, but allow them to retroactively engage the civil liability of companies,” asserts the group.

It is now up to German judges to interpret existing law to decide. The case is expected to extend over several years.

© 2026 AFP

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