In a Pakistani village nestled in rice fields, Abdul Hafeez Khoso remembers the vast industrial zones he saw in Germany when he visited to file a pioneering climate legal case.
"They're spreading pollution: up in the sky there are no borders, it can affect anywhere," the 43-year-old said.
"This is a problem for the whole world -- that is why it should be resolved at the global level."
Khoso and 38 other farmers from Pakistan's southern Sindh province who were devastated by "apocalyptic" flooding in 2022 are suing German energy firm RWE and cement maker Heidelberg Materials in a rare bid to make big polluters pay damages for climate impacts.
The companies are being targeted not over specific operations in Pakistan, but because of their climate-warming emissions.
They are headquartered in Germany, where a recent legal case opened the door to such suits.
The litigation argues that the companies' emissions contributed to climate change and turbo-charged rain that wiped out their crops, livestock and homes.
"The year 2022 was an apocalyptic scene -- not even our elders had ever witnessed such weather," Khoso, who lives in the district of Jacobabad with his wife and toddler, told AFP.
"We had nothing left."
Both firms, which the plaintiffs estimate contributed 0.68 percent and 0.12 percent to global industrial emissions respectively, deny wrongdoing.
