The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has begun delivering a historic advisory opinion on climate change, which it has called an “urgent and existential threat”.
Reading the opinion at the Peace Palace in The Hague, ICJ President Yuji Iwasawa said on Wednesday that greenhouse gas emissions are “unequivocally caused by human activities” and have cross-border effects.
“The consequences of climate change are severe and far-reaching: They affect both natural ecosystems and human populations. These consequences underscore the urgent and existential threat posed by climate change,” said Iwasawa.
“Climate change treaties establish stringent obligations on states,” Iwasawa said, adding that failing to comply with them was a breach of international law.
The reading of the opinion is ongoing, and the ICJ, also known as the World Court, has yet to announce its conclusions.
Two fundamental questions
After years of lobbying by vulnerable island nations fearing they could be submerged under rising sea waters, the United Nations General Assembly asked the ICJ in 2023 for an advisory opinion, a nonbinding but important basis for international obligations.
The landmark opinion of the 15 judges of the ICJ – the court’s first-ever on climate change – will carry legal and political weight and is likely to determine the course of future climate action across the world, including whether polluters should be made to pay for their actions.
Judges waded through tens of thousands of pages of written submissions and heard two weeks of oral arguments during the ICJ’s biggest-ever case, as they sought to pull together different strands of environmental law into a definitive international standard.
The UN asked the ICJ, a UN court that adjudicates disputes between nations, to address two key questions. What are states obliged to do under international law to protect the environment from greenhouse gas emissions now and for future generations? And what are the consequences for states whose emissions cause harm, particularly to vulnerable island states?
Before the ruling, supporters of climate action gathered outside the court, chanting: “What do we want? Climate justice! When do we want it? Now!”
Potential ‘game-changer’
One of the vulnerable island states is the South Pacific nation of Vanuatu, one of a group of small nations that have been pressing for international legal intervention in the climate crisis, which threatens Vanuatu and many of its neighbours.
They have called for stronger measures, in some cases legally binding, to curb emissions and for the biggest emitters of climate-warming greenhouse gases to provide financial aid.
“We’re hoping that the ICJ will say that it is a legal obligation of states to address climate change. You have to respect other states and their right to self-determination,” Vanuatu Minister for Climate Change Ralph Regenvanu said on the eve of the ruling.
“Colonialism is gone – you know, supposedly gone – but this is a hangover where your conduct as a state continues to suppress the future of the people of another country,” Regenvanu said.
He told the AFP news agency that the ruling could be a “game-changer” in the fight against global warming.
Climate campaigners say they expect that the court’s ruling should prove a turning point, helping countries to hold polluting states accountable.
“The court can affirm that climate inaction, especially by major emitters, is not merely a policy failure but a breach of international law,” Vishal Prasad, one of 27 then-law students at the University of the South Pacific who pushed for Vanuatu to take up the case back in 2019, told Reuters.
Paris Agreement failing
In two weeks of hearings last December at the ICJ, the United States, the world’s biggest historical emitter of greenhouse gases, along with other top polluters, told the judges that existing climate treaties like the 2015 Paris Agreement, which are largely nonbinding, should be the basis for determining their responsibilities.
The Paris Agreement does not explicitly provide for direct compensation for past damage caused by pollution, although at UN talks in 2022, wealthy nations did agree to create a fund to help vulnerable countries deal with current impacts caused by past pollution.
The Paris Agreement saw more than 190 countries commit efforts to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).
But it has failed to curb global greenhouse gas emissions, and last year, the UN warned in a report that current climate policies will result in global warming of more than 3C (5.4F) above preindustrial levels by 2100.