On March 29th, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution to call on the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to provide an advisory opinion on the obligations of countries to address the climate crisis.
The resolution, which was adopted by consensus, seeks the opinion of the ICJ on the obligations of states, under international law, to protect other states who are unjustly impacted by the climate crisis as well as the rights of present and future generations against the adverse effects of climate change.
The campaign to bring the matter before the ICJ was launched over two years ago by a group of students, the Pacific Island Students Fighting Climate Change, and then taken forward by the Government of Vanuatu, who worked with a core group of 17 other nations to prepare the first draft of the resolution. Over 130 countries co-sponsored the resolution, and 200 plus civil society organizations, including Climate Refugees, highlighting the urgency felt across the world to undertake rapid climate action while upholding climate justice.
Why is this important?
The ICJ is the world’s highest international court and is in fact the only principal UN organ yet to address the climate crisis. While an advisory opinion is not legally binding, it carries significant weight as it can clarify states’ obligations to protect their people as well as influence climate-related legal actions and future climate negotiations.
The Court’s opinion could be very informative and influential in clarifying the obligations historic emitters (i.e. countries in the Global North) have toward countries disproportionately impacted by the climate crisis in the Global South, such as Vanuatu. In other words, the ICJ can interpret existing international laws, such as human rights laws and environmental agreements, to weigh in on states’ obligations to their own citizens and to each other, which could have far-reaching legal and policy impacts for high-emitting countries.
For instance, while the advisory opinion is separate from the loss and damage fund which states agreed to establish during COP27 back in November, it can provide legal clarity on what exactly loss and damage means and how such a fund would be operationalized, according to Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu’s minister of climate change adaptation.
This is a significant moment for Vanuatu and other Pacific Island nations who have shown tremendous climate leadership despite facing disproportionately severe climate adversity. In fact, it was Vanuatu who first proposed to establish a loss and damage fund back in 1991.
This latest milestone follows a request put forward by Chile and Colombia earlier in the year for an advisory opinion by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights on the obligations of states to respond to the climate emergency under international human rights law. Highlighting the vulnerability of communities and ecosystems in Latin America, the request emphasized the need for regional standards to accelerate a rights-based approach in order to confront climate change.
Although these legal processes will be lengthy, it reminds us that climate activism and advocacy, especially at the grassroots level, have the power to hold high-emitting actors accountable for their negative impacts on the planet. No matter what the outcome is, it is clear that the space for inaction on climate change at the state level is rapidly shrinking, and that politicians and policymakers who continue to drag their feet are simply delaying the inevitable. Champion states have shown they will not wait for the Global North to do the right thing, an approach that for states like rapidly-disappearing Vanuatu is as high-stakes as it gets.