Top UN court wraps historic climate change case

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (CN) — The highest court of the United Nations finished two weeks of hearings into the climate crisis on Friday, with nearly 100 countries participating in the historic proceedings.

“This landmark case has shown a shared determination from representatives across Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, Pacific Island States and even a few European States to uphold and apply the rule of international law in the context of climate change. We are coming to the court seeking justice,” said Arnold Kiel Loughman, Attorney General for the Republic of Vanuatu.

In 2023, the U.N. General Assembly voted to ask the International Court of Justice for an advisory opinion on the legal obligations countries have to combat climate change and what they must do to repair existing environmental damage.

It was the largest case ever undertaken by The Hague-based court. Over two weeks, judges heard from 96 countries, ranging from the United States to Fiji, as well as 11 organizations, including the World Health Organization and the European Union.

The push for the request was led by the island nation of Vanuatu, a chain of some 80 islands about 500 miles long in the South Pacific Ocean.

“The conduct is unlawful, it must cease, and its consequences must be repaired," Vanuatu’s special envoy for climate change, Ralph Regenvanu said in his opening remarks. “It is the most consequential case in the history of the court.”

Outside of the courtroom on the opening day, hundreds of climate activists gathered, holding signs that said “uphold human rights” and “climate justice now.”

The idea of seeking an opinion from the ICJ began in 2021 in a Fiji classroom. Law students at the University of the South Pacific became convinced they had found the best path to force the global community to curb greenhouse emissions.

“For our generation and for the Pacific Islands, the climate crisis is an existential threat. It is a matter of survival, and the world’s biggest economies are not taking this crisis seriously,” Vishal Prasad, the director of Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change, told reporters before the hearings.

But not all countries want aggressive measures. Last week, the United States argued it’s unfair to single out individual countries for “more” obligations and that there are existing legal agreements to combat climate change.

“States’ international legal obligations in respect of climate change are found primarily in the United Nations climate change regime, and the Paris Agreement in particular,” Margaret Taylor, a legal adviser for the U.S. Department of State, told the court’s 15 judges.

The 2015 treaty calls for limiting global heating to 1.5 degrees Celsius, or at least to a figure below 2 degrees Celsius.

A number of developing countries have argued that since countries like the United States have been able to benefit from greenhouse gas emissions, they should pay reparations and be forced to reduce more.

Yet the U.S. also pushed back on the idea that the country should be responsible for its historic emissions. “It was only in the late 1980s that states became aware of the causes and risks associated with climate change,” Taylor said.

The hearings started just a week after the end of the annual United Nations climate summit known as COP, where richer countries agreed to pay $300 billion a year by 2035 to help with climate change mitigation — substantially less than the $1.3 trillion a year that vulnerable countries say is needed.

By February 2025, all U.N. member states will have to submit plans for reducing emissions and adaptation measures.

Though they are nonbinding, advisory opinions carry significant legal and political weight. The court previously has taken up questions about the independence of Kosovo, the separation of Chagos from Mauritius and Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories.

Other courts have also found that states have obligations to combat climate change. In the first international court decision, the European Court of Human Rights in April sided with a group of senior Swiss women who argued their government violated their rights by failing to protect them from the impact of a warming planet.

In May, the Hamburg-based International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea found that countries must take action to fight back against rising global temperatures and increasingly destructive storms in a separate advisory opinion.

Climate activists in the Netherlands and Germany have also succeeded in bringing cases against their governments for failing to act. The Dutch Supreme Court ordered the government to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in 2019, in the landmark Urgenda decision.

The court is expected to issue its opinion sometime in 2025.

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