THE HAGUE: A Vanuatu representative opened a landmark case that seeks to establish a legal framework on how nations should address climate change on Monday, saying that the future of the earth is at stake during hearings at the highest United Nations court.
Over the next two weeks, the International Court of Justice will hear presentations from more than 100 nations and organizations, the most ever.
According to Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu’s climate change advocate, “the outcome of these proceedings will reverberate across generations, determining the fate of nations like mine and the future of our planet.” Regenvanu told the 15-judge panel in the paneled chamber of the Peace Palace in The Hague, “This may very well be the most consequential case in the history of humanity.”
In the battle against climate change, activists anticipate that the ICJ ruling will have significant legal ramifications that will affect both domestic and international laws as well as ongoing court battles. Others worry that the UN’s top court may take months or even years to provide the requested non-binding advisory opinion, and that its impact will be little.
Outside the Peace Palace, a small group of demonstrators gathered next to a large screen that stated, “We are watching.” Banners reading “Fund our future, climate finance now” and “Biggest problem to the highest court” were displayed by protesters. Siosiua Veikune, a 25-year-old Tonga native and member of the Pacific Island Students Fighting Climate Change group, stated that this hearing is crucial for the climate justice fight.
Days after a contentious climate agreement was reached at the COP29 meeting in Azerbaijan, the presentations at the picturesque Peace Palace take place. Last year, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution referring two important climate-related issues to the International Court of Justice.
It began by asking what duties states had under international law to prevent greenhouse gas emissions that harm the Earth’s climate system.
Second, in situations when governments “have caused significant harm to the climate system and other parts of the environment by their acts and omissions,” what are the legal ramifications of these obligations?
Emissions at record levels
According to Joie Chowdhury, a senior attorney at the Centre for International Environmental Law, which has offices in the US and Switzerland, climate activists did not anticipate that the ICJ’s ruling would “provide very specific answers.”
Rather, the court will offer “a legal blueprint … on which more specific questions can be decided,” she predicted.
She anticipates the judges’ ruling sometime in the upcoming year, which “will inform climate litigation on domestic, national, and international levels.” The 98 nations and 12 organizations that will address the court include some of the biggest carbon polluters in the world, including the top three greenhouse gas emitters, China, the United States, and India.
At the 2015 Paris Climate Conference, nations committed to attempting to keep global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial levels. However, it is far from on track and did not specify how to do that.
