HAMBURG, Germany (CN) — Failing to prevent the existential threat of climate change is against international law was the main message from a group of small island nations at the world’s top maritime tribunal on Monday.
The Commission of Small Island States on Climate Change and International Law is asking the Hamburg-based International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea for an advisory opinion that clarifies what legal obligations countries have to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
“Without rapid action, climate change may prevent my children and grandchildren from living on their ancestral home,” Gaston Alfonso Browne, the prime minister of the Caribbean nation Antigua and Barbuda, said in his opening statement.
Browne, together with Prime Minister Kausea Natano of the South Pacific island nation of Tuvalu, co-chairs COSIS. The group comprises Antigua and Barbuda, Tuvalu, Palau, Niue, Vanuatu, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and Grenadines, St. Kitts and Nevis and The Bahamas. The nine countries are scattered across the globe but share a considerable threat from rising sea levels and increasing temperatures.
Naima Te Maile Fifita, a lawyer from Tuvalu, described her fear that her homeland will not exist for her or for her one-year-old daughter if drastic steps are not taken soon.
“We have a duty, both moral and legal, towards generations to come,” she told the tribunal’s 21 judges.
Her fears are not unfounded: Rising sea levels have already swallowed up islands. In 2016 researchers confirmed that the Solomon Islands lost five of its islands to the ocean. Last month saw the highest-ever global ocean temperature, breaking a record set in 2016.
The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea established ITLOS in 1982. Any of the intergovernmental body’s 169 members can ask the tribunal for an advisory opinion. Though non-binding, opinions carry significant legal weight.
The group has asked ITLOS to clarify the responsibilities parties to the convention have under two specific parts of the treaty. States are obliged to “prevent, reduce and control pollution” and “protect and preserve the marine environment.” COSIS argues that greenhouse gases qualify as pollution under the treaty and signatories are required to reduce how much they release.
Antigua and Barbuda together with Tuvalu founded COSIS during COP 26, the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference.
“The time has come to speak in legally binding obligations rather than empty promises,” Browne, the leader of Antigua and Barbuda, told the court.
The island nations are also looking to The Hague for support. In March, 132 countries signed on to a request from the United Nations General Assembly to get an advisory opinion from the United Nation's highest court, The International Court of Justice.
That campaign was spearheaded by another COSIS member, the South Pacific archipelago of Vanuatu. A group of 20 law students at the University of South Pacific in Vanuatu came up with the idea to ask for an advisory opinion in 2019.
Climate activists have brought complaints in a variety of judicial venues as well. Earlier this year, Chile and Colombia requested an advisory opinion from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. Based in Costa Rica, it hears human rights cases from its 20 member states in the Americas.
At the end of September, the European Court of Human Rights will hear a complaint brought by a group of Portugese young people who claim climate change threatens their future. It’s the third major climate change case before the Strasbourg-based court this year. Europe’s top rights court heard a pair of cases in March from citizens arguing their governments were failing to address climate change.
National courts have also weighed in. In a groundbreaking decision in 2019, the highest court in The Netherlands ruled that the Dutch government must reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Two years later, Germany's top court said the government must set clear goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Montana is home to what is believed to be the first case against government authorities in the United States for failing to prevent climate change. The state’s constitution calls for the protection of a “clean and healthful environment” and the 16 young plaintiffs say the state isn’t doing enough to meet that standard.
Hearings in Hamburg will continue on Tuesday and are scheduled to last for two weeks.
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