In a landmark case, the Commission on Human Rights of the Philippines (CHR) announced Friday it will launch the first-ever investigation into dozens of fossil fuel companies for alleged human rights violations over the industry’s role in worsening climate change.

The inquiry will commence on December 10, International Human Rights Day, and target stakeholders from 50 Big Oil corporations, including ExxonMobil, Chevron, Royal Dutch Shell, Beyond Petroleum (BP), and ConocoPhillips—along with another 40 “legal entities that are responsible for the majority of global CO2 and methane emissions in the earth’s atmosphere,” said Greenpeace International, one of the organizations that filed the petition (pdf) in September calling for the CHR to assemble a task force on climate change and human rights.

“Climate change interferes with the enjoyment of our fundamental rights as human beings,” the petition states. “Hence, we demand accountability of those contributing to climate change.”
“It’s time we held to account those who are most responsible for the devastating effects of climate change.”
—Zelda Soriano, Greenpeace

The Philippines, a cluster of low-lying islands in the South Pacific, are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of rising sea levels and extreme weather events fueled by skyrocketing greenhouse gas emissions.

The commission’s move marks the first time a call for climate justice will force the fossil fuel industry to answer for its environmental devastation.

“For the longest time since they started their business, these carbon polluters have been invincible. Nobody has challenged their social license and their role in climate change,” Anna Abad, a climate justice campaigner for Greenpeace Southeast Asia, told Reuters on Friday. “This is one step in a whole legal strategy of making sure those complicit in climate change are held accountable.”

The CHR’s response “signals a turning point in the struggle to avoid catastrophic climate change,” said Greenpeace executive director Kumi Naidoo. “It opens a critical new avenue of struggle against the fossil fuel companies driving destructive climate change.”

The petitioners also include survivors of the tropical cyclones such as the 2013 Typhoon Haiyan, which killed at least 6,300 people in the Philippines alone.

“In the era of climate change, we feel that the real value of the statistics and reports of disaster-related casualties has not been given adequate expression,” they wrote. “The real life pain and agony of losing loved ones, homes, farms—almost everything—during strong typhoons, droughts, and other weather extremes, as well as the everyday struggle to live, to be safe, and to be able to cope  with the adverse, slow onset impacts of climate change, are beyond numbers and words.”