Summary: The Waratah Coal v. Youth Verdict case in 2022 marked the first time in Australia that a coal project was rejected on the grounds that its contribution to climate change would unjustifiably harm human rights, including the right to life, the cultural rights of First Peoples, and the protection of children. The Queensland Land Court found that these impacts outweighed the mine’s claimed economic benefits, making climate change a legal issue of justice and rights rather than just environmental regulation. This set a powerful precedent for using human rights law to challenge fossil fuel projects. The Waratah Coal v. Youth Verdict case exemplifies Systemic Risk Response (SRR) criteria related to, Universal Responsibility, Complexity, Multiple Ways of Knowing, and Transformation.
Overview
In Australia, Queensland is a major coal-producing region boasting vast coalfields, particularly in the Bowen Basin, with a significant portion exported. In 2024, 199 Mt (mega tonnes) of coal were exported by Queensland.1 The Queensland Land Court case against the Waratah Coal Galilee Coal Project was a groundbreaking legal battle spearheaded by Youth Verdict (YV) and The Bimblebox Alliance (TBA), and assisted by non-profit lawyers at the Environmental Defenders Office (EDO). This case was the first in Australia to challenge a coal mine under Queensland’s Human Rights Act 2019. The objections raised centred on human rights violations, including the right to life, children’s rights, equality before the law, property rights, privacy, and First Nations cultural rights as they relate to the impacts of climate change resulting from the emissions of the proposed mine. The Court ruled that it must consider human rights and rejected Waratah’s attempt to strike out these objections. This resulted in an alteration to Waratah’s mine plan in 2021, which called for the elimination of open-cut mining on the Bimblebox Nature Refuge while continuing underground operations.2
A number of legal precedents were reached in this case: Youth Verdict’s application to implement a proposed “First Law Protocol” (a blueprint embedding First Nations cultural rights principles in any legal proceedings), although not accepted in full, led to a landmark moment in the case, permitting on-Country evidence from First Nations witnesses.3 “Country” refers to the lands, waterways, seas, plants, and biodiversity that First Peoples of Australia are connected to. To be “on-Country” is to be present in these lands.4 Despite Waratah’s efforts to block this, the Court ruled that excluding such evidence would be unlawful and incompatible with human rights. Evidence was heard in culturally significant locations, including the Bimblebox Nature Refuge, Cairns (Gimuy), and the Torres Strait Islands (Zenadth Kes), over five days in May 2022.5 This also allowed First Nations evidence to be given concurrently, which means multiple witnesses of a particular tribal group or family group were allowed to give evidence together.6
On 25 November 2022, the Land Court ruled in favour of the objectors (YV) on all grounds, recommending the rejection of the Environmental Authority and Mining Lease. This historic decision set a precedent for human rights–based climate litigation in Australia and reinforced the role of First Nations leadership in environmental justice.7
Highlights in Systemic Risk Response
A systemic risk response encompasses any action that mitigates, prepares for, adapts to, and transforms away from the harms of systemic risks. This example shows that collective action and the incorporation of different perspectives can push forward change.
Universal Responsibility
The Queensland Land Court’s decision demonstrates a comprehensive and accountable approach to systemic risk by considering both human and ecological systems across multiple timescales, and prioritizes actions that uphold the public good and integrity of nature over those that advance private interests. The Court not only assessed expert reports from diverse fields, such as climate change and ecology, but also gave significant weight to the testimony of First Nations peoples representing all Queensland people.8 This inclusivity reflects a recognition of universal responsibility, as it acknowledges the role of First Nations people with historical, sacred, and lived experiences in stewarding ecological systems spanning thousands of years and the impacts of systemic risks stemming from settler-colonialism. Furthermore, the decision aligns with the Human Rights Act, ensuring that duty bearers consider human rights and whether a trade-off of ecological systems and the planetary commons is justifiable. The incorporation of First Nations witnesses on behalf of Queensland people and the Court’s historic acceptance of on-Country testimony underscores the broad scope of accountability in addressing systemic risks.9
Complexity
Exemplifying a comprehensive and accountable approach to systemic risk both within and across systems, the Queensland Land Court ruled that “the assessed economic benefit, while considerable, was optimistic, and did not fully cost likely environmental damage, or climate change impacts, including public health and property costs.”10 It rejected Waratah Coal’s argument that approving the mine would reduce global emissions by replacing lower-quality coal, instead recognizing that new coal projects directly contribute to climate change, regardless of market demand. This decision highlighted the complex interrelationship between environmental and economic systems and the cascading impacts on public health, social equity, and governance.11
Additionally, expert evidence from climate scientists, ecologists, and public health specialists revealed that the mine’s emissions would exacerbate climate change, leading to rising sea levels, coastal erosion, and the loss of critical ecosystems like mangroves, which act as natural buffers against erosion. These impacts would accelerate biodiversity loss and disrupt ecosystems, causing ripple effects across the broader environmental system.12
Furthermore, although Waratah Coal focused on the mine’s economic benefits,13 it failed to consider the unintended climate and human rights impacts. In contrast, Youth Verdict and The Bimblebox Alliance highlighted the project’s role in worsening climate change, violating First Nations cultural rights, and damaging the Bimblebox Nature Refuge.14 By allowing First Nations witnesses to provide evidence on-Country for the first time in Queensland environmental litigation, the Court recognized the deep, unique cultural connection to land and sea.
Multiple Ways of Knowing
The concerted effort to incorporate First Nations perspectives by holding hearings on-Country allowed witnesses to present their cultural and environmental knowledge from within their own communities and on their traditional lands and waters. This approach not only honoured the deep connection First Nations people have to the land and seas, but also created space for collective storytelling and concurrent testimony from multiple members of the same family or tribal group. By accepting part of the First Law protocol, the Court demonstrated a commitment to inclusivity, ensuring that Indigenous expertise and lived experiences were central to the decision-making process. This comprehensive approach not only reinforced the importance of Indigenous leadership in climate justice but also reshaped how legal systems address the intersection of human rights, culture, and environmental protection.15 These first-person testimonies demonstrate how witnesses’ cultural and spiritual connection to their traditional lands and waters would be eroded by the proposed mining lease application:
I am Torres Strait Islander and always will be. So, I am entitled to practice my very own Language and culture only on my own land where my ancestors are and forever will be. But my land will be gone with the water and will disappear.
Lala Gutchen, Erub Meuram Person, Erub & Poruma Island, Zenadth Kes (Torres Strait)16
Now that it [Brown booby bird] does not nest there, I sometimes feel that I, myself, am gone, like part of me is not really complete. Half of the evidence of me is not there.
Kapua Gutchen, Zenadth Kes (Torres Strait), Erub (Darnley) Island 17
These changes will become the catalyst for disconnect from cultural and spiritual practices, replaced with an echo only heard by us, combined with the sorrow of how mankind disrespected what sustains them. Our spiritual health will decline as climate change continues to get worse.
Harold Ludwick, Guugu Yimidhirr Country (Hopevale, QLD)18
When we respect the sea, the sea look after us. It is a two-way thing, we look after it and him look after us. All our cultural needs depend on the sea. My art is a tribute to those ancestors and a reminder that we are keepers of the sea.
Florence Gutchen, Zenadth Kes (Torres Strait), Poruma (Coconut) Island19
Transformation
In this case, transformation was evident in both the legal process and outcome. Not only did this case push beyond existing legal norms, it also reshaped how courts evaluate ecological and social harms. Their success reinforced the idea that environmental destruction, contributing to climate change, is a direct violation of fundamental rights, establishing legal precedent for future climate litigation both in Australia and globally. Similar cases in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland have drawn inspiration from this approach, illustrating the case’s broader impact on legal strategies for climate justice.20
At its core, the case acknowledged the historical and ongoing exploitation of both natural and human systems, highlighting how extractive industries perpetuate colonial legacies by threatening Indigenous lands, disregarding cultural rights and dismantling knowledge systems that span millennia. By affirming First
Nations’ deep connection to Country as well as their rights associated with that connection and their right to participate in decision-making, the case challenged power imbalances that have long shaped resource extraction projects. This precedent paves the way for Indigenous voices to become central to determining the future of environmental governance, toward a more just and sustainable approach to future development decisions.21
Key Insights and Lessons Learned
The Queensland Land Court case against the Waratah Coal Galilee Coal Project was a landmark victory for climate justice, integrating human rights into environmental litigation for the first time in Australia. The Court recognized the interconnected harms of coal projects on biodiversity, public health, and social equity, rejecting arguments that economic benefits outweighed long-term environmental costs. A key breakthrough was the acceptance of on-Country evidence from First Nations witnesses, affirming Indigenous knowledge and cultural rights in legal decision-making and as representatives of Queensland people. In conversation with Murrawah Johnson, a Wirdi woman from the Birri Gubba Peoples in Queensland, Indigenous leader, and activist who worked on this case, several transferable lessons emerged that contribute to effective systemic risk responses:
- The importance of creating a platform for Indigenous Communities’ knowledge and experiences: The platform enabled both Indigenous Communities and Queensland as a whole to give testimony to their lived experiences that span generations to be heard and acted upon.
- Justice for First Nations peoples enables systemic transformation that benefits everybody: Empowering First Nations to represent all Queenslanders is very significant: When justice is delivered to the most vulnerable, “those on the lowest rung — everybody wins. We hold in trust 80% of the world’s biodiversity, not just biodiversity: a totally different and ancient ontology, spirituality, and way of thinking and being.”
- The importance of taking a principles-based approach to navigating systemic risks: “We need to step back and audit ourselves on how we do climate action. We need to re-mandate universal principles of justice, restitution, protection [of] the sanctity of life.”
Cultural knowledge is uninterrupted for thousands and thousands of years and so … we need to do something that allows for the process of how the evidence (of Indigenous Peoples) is received, valued, and acted upon — they are not lay-witnesses. This is unquestionable expertise: nobody else knows those lands, seas, the winds better than they do.
“If you acknowledge Indigenous Australia — that [it] is the oldest living culture[s] in the world, the story of the Rainbow Serpent and how we are related to Country — we are the oldest living environmental law in
the world — there is something to be learnt from it. It is a great responsibility in terms of being part of the
longest … [legacy of sustainability] … we are the elders of the world. The Western system is juvenile; it is a toddler; it is going around breaking everything, there are consequences down the track. We have been here long enough … we have living stories about the end of the ice age.
Murrawah Johnson, Indigenous leader and activist, a Wirdi woman from the Birri Gubba Peoples in Queensland
1 Manufacturing and Regional and Rural Development Department of Natural Resources and Mines, “Coal:
Fuelling growth and opportunity,” guidelines, Department of Natural Resources and Mines, Manufacturing
and Regional and Rural Development, accessed September 23, 2025, www.nrmmrrd.qld.gov.au/mining-
exploration/investors/coal.
2 Waratah Coal Pty Ltd v Youth Verdict Ltd & Ors (No 6) [2022] QLC 21 (Queensland Human Rights
Commission, 2023), www.qhrc.qld.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/42193/QHRC_casenote_WCvYVL-
and-Ors.pdf; Waratah Coal Pty Ltd v Youth Verdict Ltd & Ors, MRA050-20 (MLA 70454) EPA051-20
(EPML 00571313) (Land Court of Queensland November 25, 2022),
archive.sclqld.org.au/qjudgment/2022/QLC22-021.pdf.
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4 “Goldman Prize winner Murrawah Johnson says First Nations must be at the forefront of creating change,”
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6 “Goldman Prize winner Murrawah Johnson says First Nations must be at the forefront of creating change.”
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8 Youth Verdict, “Our cultural & human rights case against Palmer’s Waratah coal mine.”
9 Youth Verdict, “Our cultural & human rights case against Palmer’s Waratah coal mine.”
10 “Waratah Coal Pty Ltd v Youth Verdict Ltd & Ors (No 6) [2022] QLC 21,” The University of Queensland
Australia, May 3, 2023, law.uq.edu.au/research/vulnerable-persons-project/human-rights-case-
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11 Waratah Coal Pty Ltd v Youth Verdict Ltd & Ors.
12 Waratah Coal Pty Ltd v Youth Verdict Ltd & Ors; Youth Verdict, “Our Cultural & Human Rights Case
against Palmer’s Waratah Coal Mine.”
13 The University of Queensland Australia, “Waratah Coal Pty Ltd v Youth Verdict Ltd & Ors (No 6) [2022]
QLC 21.”
14 Waratah Coal Pty Ltd v Youth Verdict Ltd & Ors.
15 Youth Verdict, “First Law Protocol.”
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17 “Kapua Gutchen,” Youth Verdict, accessed September 23, 2025,
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21 “Goldman Prize Winner Murrawah Johnson says First Nations must be at the forefront of creating
change”; Youth Verdict, “Our Cultural & Human Rights Case against Palmer’s Waratah Coal Mine.”