The top court of the United Nations has started proceedings to examine the legal obligations of countries to combat climate change.
The move followed a March 2023 request by the U.N., spearheaded by South Pacific nation Vanuatu.
On Dec. 2, Vanuatu was the first country to present arguments to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), also known as the World Court. Ultimately, 98 countries and 12 international organizations will do so, in hearings that will continue until Dec. 13.
The advisory opinions of the ICJ are nonbinding, though they could be legally and politically significant, as the eventual opinions will likely be cited in climate change lawsuits.
The ICJ judges will address two key questions: What duties do states have under international law to protect the climate and environment from greenhouse gas emissions; and what legal consequences arise if states harm the climate through their actions or inaction?
“We find ourselves on the front lines of a crisis we did not create, a crisis that threatens our very existence,” Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu’s special envoy for climate change and the environment, told the court.
“We are hoping [the ICJ] can provide a new avenue to break through the inertia we experience when trying to talk about climate justice,” Regenvanu told Reuters.
Climate Justice
The proceedings come as small nations like Vanuatu, frustrated by a perceived lack of decisive action at COP29, turn to the ICJ to amplify their calls for “climate justice”—although larger countries have pledged vast amounts of public and private funds to address the effects of greenhouse gas emissions.Lea Main-Klingst, a lawyer with ClientEarth, told Reuters she believes the November UN climate conference COP29 in Azerbaijan did not achieve enough.
“As COP29 failed to provide a clear direction for climate justice and ambition, any developments from the ICJ will now only become more weighty,” she said.
On Nov. 24, countries at the climate summit adopted a $300 billion annual global finance target—$50 billion higher than a previous draft proposal, although activists said that not enough is being spent.
Oxfam International’s climate change policy lead, Nafkote Dabi, said in a statement on Nov. 25 that the deal was “a terrible verdict.”
“The $300 billion so-called ‘deal’ that poorer countries have been bullied into accepting is unserious and dangerous—a soulless triumph for the rich, but a genuine disaster for our planet and communities who are being flooded, starved, and displaced today by climate breakdown,” she said.
Harry Wilkinson, head of policy at the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), told The Epoch Times by email that it is difficult to determine, at this stage, the exact implications of the lawsuit—although it will likely result in increased calls for climate reparations.
“It is hard to predict how big an impact this case will have,” he said.
“But I believe it is a huge mistake to try and litigate a complex problem like climate change in this way,” Wilkinson said.
EU Court Rules Against Swiss Government
Earlier this year the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled that the government of Switzerland violated the human rights of its citizens by failing to take sufficient action to protect them against climate risks.The landmark ruling from Europe’s highest human rights court has implications in terms of net zero policy against future lawsuits.
The ruling found that Switzerland did not give sufficient protection to the group Senior Women for Climate Protection. The group, which has an average age of 74, argued that older women are most vulnerable to extreme heat, and claimed that this is happening more frequently.
The court said the country “had failed to comply with its duties” to combat climate change and meet emissions targets.
The group had argued that the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights contains language specifically obligating governments to protect citizens from the harmful effects of climate change.
Article 8 of the convention describes the right to respect for an individual’s private and family life, as well as one’s home and personal correspondence.
The women’s group argued that includes the right not to have one’s personal life impacted by climate change, and create an obligation for convention member nations to ensure that right.
Researcher Ben Pile, who runs the group Climate Debate UK, told The Epoch Times that court intervention is a logical development of the climate change agenda.
“It has been a known fact of the green agenda for 40 or more years, that the climate agenda requires governments to subordinate themselves to intergovernmental agencies such as the ICJ,” he said.
