Does government inaction on climate change violate human rights?

That is the question the European Court of Human Rights will for the first time seek to answer in Strasbourg, France, as it rules this week on three separate climate cases.

The verdicts will set a precedent for future litigation on how rising temperatures affect people’s right to a liveable planet.

The following lays out what is at stake.

(First,) six Portuguese youths are suing 32 European countries for allegedly failing to avert catastrophic climate change that they say threatens their right to life.

At the same time, thousands of elderly Swiss women have argued that their government’s “woefully inadequate” efforts to fight global warming put them at risk of dying during heatwaves.

In the third and final case, Damien Carême, a former mayor of the French commune of Grande-Synthe, is challenging France’s refusal to take more ambitious climate measures.