By Anders Lorenzen
A ruling by the highest global court, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), states that individual countries must protect their people and environment from greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and act with due diligence to fulfil this obligation.
Delivered by the court’s president, Judge Iwasawa Yuji, the ruling stated that this obligation also includes the target set out in the Paris Agreement of 2015, to limit warming to 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels.
ICJ: Legal consequences for countries failing to comply
The United Nations (UN) Court, which is based in The Hague in the Netherlands, warned that any country that breaches these obligations will incur legal responsibility. And a country could be required to cease the wrongful conduct, offer guarantees of non-repetition, and make a full reparation depending on the specific circumstances.
In a video statement, the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, welcomed the ruling, “This is a victory for our planet, for climate justice and for the power of young people to make a difference,” he said.
What led to the ICJ ruling?
The decision was justified by statements from the Court’s member states on their commitments to environmental and human rights treaties.
The ICJ refers to the ozone layer treaties, the Biodiversity Convention, the Kyoto Protocol, and the Paris Agreement as examples.
What does the Paris Agreement say?
The Paris Agreement, adopted by 195 UN member countries at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP21) in Paris, France, on 12 December 2015, is a legally binding international treaty on climate change. It states that temperature increases must be limited to well below 2 degrees Celsius, preferably to 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels.
ICJ: Human rights as a catalyst
The Court says those treaties oblige member countries to protect the environment for citizens worldwide and future generations.
However, it argued that the Agreement also clearly includes human rights, as a clean and sustainable environment is a precondition for many human rights.
The ICJ members are signed up to several human rights treaties, including the most profound, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Court argued that action on climate change is the key to guaranteeing those rights.
The role of Vanuatu
The background for this week’s lawsuit dates back to September 2021. This is when the Pacific island state of Vanuatu, which is severely threatened by rising sea levels, said it would seek an advisory opinion from the ICJ on climate change.
The country of less than half a million inhabitants lobbied other UN member states for support in this initiative.
In March 2023, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution requesting an advisory opinion on the following two questions: What are states’ obligations under international law to ensure the protection of the environment, and what are the legal consequences for countries under these obligations?
As the UN Charter states, the General Assembly or the Security Council can request an advisory opinion from the ICJ.
Although advisory opinions are not binding, they do carry significant legal and moral authority. They help clarify and develop international law by defining member states’ legal obligations.
This is the most wide-ranging case the ICJ has ever undertaken, involving written statements and the participation of individual countries in oral proceedings.
International law now mandates that all countries are bound to act on the climate crisis
The director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Johan Rockstrom, welcomed the ruling. He stated that it made it clear that all nations are bound by international law to prevent harm from emissions of planet-warming greenhouse gases. “The court was pointing the direction for the entire world and making clear that every nation is legally obliged to solve the climate crisis,” he said.
Jean Su, senior attorney and director of the Centre for Biological Diversity’s energy justice programme, hailed the significance of this ruling: “The World Court’s stunning opinion could be a major watershed for climate law and climate justice in the US and worldwide. The Court enshrined a healthy, sustainable environment as a human right. And it singled out the failure of governments to curb fossil fuel production and consumption as a wrongful act”, she said.
One of the architects of the Paris Agreement, Cristiana Figueres, the former head of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), called the ruling a watershed moment. “It is the most far-reaching legal statement ever made on the responsibility of states to protect the rights of current and future generations to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment. And it is the clearest legal affirmation to date that cooperation among states to address climate change is not optional – it is a binding obligation.”
Anders Lorenzen is the founding Editor of A greener life, a greener world.
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