The UN’s top court will next week begin hearings on the legal obligation of countries to fight climate change and the consequences for states that contribute to global warming, the outcome of which could impact litigation around the world.
Although the advisory opinions of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) are non-binding, they are still legally and politically important. The ICJ’s final opinion on climate change will likely be cited in climate change-inspired lawsuits in courts from Europe to Latin America and beyond, experts say.
The hearing came a week after developing countries described an agreement at the COP29 summit to provide $300 billion in annual climate finance by 2035 to help poor countries deal with climate change as woefully inadequate.
Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu’s special envoy for climate change and the environment, said it was essential to phase out fossil fuels and provide more funding to poorer countries bearing the brunt of climate change, such as his Pacific island nation. Go.
“We are not seeing that in the COP outcome,” Regenvanu told Reuters.
“We’re hoping that (the ICJ) can provide a new way to overcome the inertia we’ve experienced when trying to talk about climate justice,” he said.
Fiji’s Attorney General Graham Leung described the hearing as a historic opportunity for the small island developing state to seek climate change justice.
climate litigation
Climate-related litigation is on the rise.
Earlier this year, Europe’s top human rights court ruled that the Swiss government had violated the rights of its citizens by failing to take adequate steps to tackle climate change. But it also dismissed two other cases, pointing to the complexities of the growing wave of climate litigation.
Vanuatu, one of the small developing countries that pressed for the ICJ advisory opinion, says it is disproportionately suffering the impacts of climate change as a result of increasingly frequent storm surges and rising sea levels.
Vanuatu will be the first of 98 countries and twelve international organizations to present arguments at the ICJ, also known as the World Court. It is the highest court of the United Nations to resolve international disputes between states and may be tasked by the UN General Assembly with giving advisory opinions.
In 2023, the Assembly sought formal opinions on questions including the legal obligations of states to protect the climate system and whether large states that contribute to greenhouse gas emissions could be liable for damages, particularly to small island nations.
Lee Main-Klingst, lawyer at ClientEarth, said, “Since COP29 failed to provide a clear direction for climate justice and ambition, any development by the ICJ will become even more important now.”
In addition to small island states and several Western and developing countries, the court will also hear the world’s top two emitters of greenhouse gases, the United States and China. Oil producing group OPEC will also give its opinion.
The hearing will begin at 10 a.m. local time (0900 GMT) on Monday and continue until December 13. The court’s opinion will be given in 2025.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
