The world’s highest court will begin unprecedented hearings next week aimed at finding a “legal blueprint” for how countries should protect the environment from damaging greenhouse gases — and what if they don’t. What will be the results?
Starting Monday, lawyers and representatives from more than 100 countries and organizations will make submissions to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, the largest number ever.
Activists hope the ICJ judges’ legal opinion will have far-reaching consequences in the fight against climate change.
But others worry that the UN-backed request for a non-binding advisory opinion will have limited impact — and deliver. The UN’s highest court could take months, or even years.
The hearing at the Peace Palace follows a bitterly negotiated climate deal at the COP29 summit in Azerbaijan, which called for developed countries to provide at least $300 billion a year by 2035 for climate finance.
Pledges from rich polluters have been insultingly reduced by poor countries, and the final agreement failed to mention a global pledge to move away from planet-warming fossil fuels.
‘No distant danger’
The UN General Assembly passed a resolution last year in which it referred two key questions to ICJ judges.
First, what obligations do states have under international law to protect the Earth’s climate system from greenhouse gas emissions? Second, what are the legal consequences under these obligations where states, “by their acts and omissions, have caused significant damage to the climate system and other parts of the environment?”
The second question also related to the legal responsibilities of states for harm caused to smaller, more vulnerable countries and their populations. This applies particularly to countries that are at risk of sea level rise and extreme weather patterns in places like the Pacific Ocean.
“For us, climate change is not a distant threat,” said Vishal Prasad, director of the Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change (PISFCC) group.
“This is reshaping our lives right now. Our islands are at risk. Our communities face catastrophic change at a rate and scale that generations before us have not known,” Prasad said as the hearing began. told reporters a few days ago.
Launching a campaign in 2019 to bring the climate issue to the ICJ, Prasad’s group of 27 students from Pacific Island countries including in his home country of Fiji, before he was taken to the United Nations.
Last year, the General Assembly unanimously passed a resolution seeking an advisory opinion from the ICJ.
‘Legal Outline’
Climate advocates did not expect the ICJ’s opinion to “provide very specific answers,” said Joy Chaudhary, a senior lawyer at the US-Swiss-based Center for International Environmental Law.
Instead, he predicted the court would “provide a kind of legal framework, upon which more specific questions can be decided,” he said.
The justices’ opinion, which she expects sometime next year, will “inform climate litigation at the local, national and international levels.” “One question that is really important, as all legal questions hinge on it, is what conduct is illegal,” Choudhary said.
“It’s very central to these operations,” he said.
Some of the world’s biggest carbon polluters – including the world’s top three greenhouse gas emitters, China, the United States and India – will be among some 98 countries and 12 organizations and groups expected to make presentations. .
On Monday, proceedings will begin with a statement from Vanuatu and the Melanesian Spearhead Group, which also represents the fragile island states of Fiji, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, as well as Indonesia and East Timor.
Organizations including the European Union and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries are due to make their statements at the end of the two-week hearing.
“With this advisory opinion, we are here not only to talk about what we fear to lose,” said PISFCC’s Prasad.
“We’re here to talk about what we can protect and what we can build if we stand together,” he said.