A coalition of countries that are particularly vulnerable to climate change are demanding that larger polluting nations be held to account under international law.
Arnold Kiel Loughman, attorney general of Vanuatu, at the International Court of Justice on Monday. (UN Photo/ICJ-CIJ/Frank van Beek)
By Eloise Goldsmith
Common Dreams
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has heard arguments in the largest climate case ever brought before it as a coalition of low-lying and developing nations demanded larger polluting nations be held to account under international law for causing “significant harm to the climate system and other parts of the environment” with runaway fossil fuel emissions over recent decades.
In the first day of hearings in The Hague on Monday that could last weeks, multiple representatives from the Pacific island of Vanuatu, which is leading the coalition of over 100 countries and allied organizations, laid the blame for the climate crisis at the feet of a small number of states that are large emitters of greenhouse gases.
“We know what the cause of climate change is: a conduct of specific States … Vanuatu’s contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions is negligible, and yet we are among those most affected by climate change,” said Arnold Kiel Loughman, attorney general of the Republic of Vanuatu.
“We find ourselves on the frontlines of a crisis we did not create,” said Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu’s special envoy for climate change and environment, told the court.
The historic moment at The Hague follows years of work on the part of Pacific Island nations, particularly Vanuatu, to push for the ICJ to take up the issue of global warming and human rights. The stakes of the planetary emergency are particularly high for these countries, which are under threat from rising seas and other climate impacts.
Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu’s special climate envoy, at the International Court of Justice on Monday. (UN Photo/ICJ-CIJ/Frank van Beek)
Ilan Kiloe, legal counsel for the Melanesian Spearhead Group, a regional subgroup that includes Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, issued a stark warning during his remarks to the court:
“Climate change is now depriving our peoples, again, of our ability to enjoy our right to self-determination in our lands. The harsh reality is that many of our people will not survive.”
Last year, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously adopted a resolution calling on the ICJ to issue an advisory opinion on climate change and human rights. The measure, which was introduced by Vanuatu and co-sponsored by more than 130 governments, requested that the world’s highest court outline countries’ legal responsibilities for combatting fossil fuel-driven climate change and the legal consequences of failing to meet those obligations.
Vanuatu’s Prime Minister Alatoi Ishmael Kalsakau briefs reporters on the draft U.N. resolution requesting an advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice on the obligations of states in respect of climate change, March 29, 2023. (UN Photo/Manuel Elías)
Over the next two weeks, the court will hear statements from nearly 100 nations, including wealthy developed countries such as the United States. Advisory opinions, unlike judgments, are not binding — but Vanuatu and other supporters hope that a forthcoming opinion would accelerate action around the climate emergency.
The country began pushing for the ICJ resolution in 2021, following a campaign launched in 2019 by a group of students from the University of the South Pacific.
“What started in the Pacific is now a historic climate justice campaign, as the world’s most urgent problem of climate change reaches the world’s highest court,” said Shiva Gounden of Greenpeace Australia Pacific.
“The next two weeks of hearings are the culmination of collective campaigning from 2019, powerful advocacy, and mobilizing the world behind this landmark campaign, to ensure the human rights of current and future generations are protected from climate destruction, and the biggest emitters are held accountable.”
Polly Banks, Vanuatu country director for Save the Children, who travelled to The Hague for the proceedings, said that “the hearing before the Court goes to questions about the efficacy, equity and fairness of the current responses to climate change, which are particularly relevant for children, who have contributed the least to climate change but will be most affected by its consequences.”
“Currently, only 2.4 percent of climate finance from multilateral funding sources is child-responsive. Even without the Court’s opinion, we know that states need to do far more to protect children from the worst impacts of this crisis, by significantly increasing climate finance to uphold children’s basic rights and access to health, education and protection,” Banks added.
The start of hearings at The Hague come on the heels of a COP29 climate summit that was heavily criticized. The summit focused heavily on climate finance, but the resulting deal was panned by critics as rich nations agreed to voluntarily provide just $300 billion to help developing nations decarbonize and deal with the impacts of the climate emergency. Poor nations and climate campaigners had demanded over a trillion dollars in funding in the form of debt-free grants and direct payments.
Eloise Goldsmith is a staff writer for Common Dreams.
This article is from Common Dreams.
Views expressed in this article and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
‘climate change’
A term that is best avoided.
‘Global warming’ is much clearer and has been shown to be more effective.
Yes, the big fossil fuel users have pumped most of the CO2 into the atmosphere historically. They have also provided the world with all the tools and technologies of modern life that has immeasurably improved the quality/quantity of human life on earth, however. Cheap energy from fossil fuels is the single most important reason the population of the world is many times higher than it was 150 years ago and that all these people eat far more calories than they used to be able to.
If rick countries are to be charged for primarily causing CC, are they also going to be recompensed by the poor countries for the benefits of modern technology and agriculture etc. from the same source?
Do you believe the rich countries got rich because they are superior or because of the slaves and then cheap labor and the enormous natural resources colonialism stole from the poor countries? Take as much time as you need.
There are myriad reasons why rich countries got rich. Slavery and colonization are certainly among them, but so are culture, and geography, and trade, and inventiveness, and entrepreneurialism, and a dozens of other reasons.
Slavery isn’t what kept the indigenous Americans from inventing the wheel or developing metallurgy before the European colonists arrived (though they did practice slavery amongst themselves). It was a lack of cultural cross-polination that people from Europe/Asia/MENA had working in their favor (which is also why they were unable to deal with European diseases), and geographic issues (such as being cut off from the developed world by two oceans), and a lack of settled population centers where agriculture and animal husbandry enable people to direct their efforts to specialized pursuits (like science and engineering and commerce) rather than spend their days hunting and gathering.
Similar issues can be found in sub-Saharan Africa, though in Africa’s case the disease issue worked the other way around. Europeans lacked immunity to sub-Saharan diseases and feared to venture inland, and a lack of navigable rivers and other resources made exploration and commercial development exceedingly difficult. The only industry they managed to develop was the slave trade, where they conquered the weaker tribes and sold them on the east coast and north coasts to Islamic slave traders, and on the west coast to European slave traders. That all ended when England shut down Atlantic the slave trade and America shut down the Barbary slave trade and the Ottomans (mostly) ended the Islamic slave trade in the 19th century.
Sadly, slavery has enjoyed a pretty big comeback in the 21st century with ISIS and the collapse of Libya, as well as human trafficking out of Asia (and the Uighers in China) and warlords in sub-Saharan Africa who utilize slaves/serfs to dig for minerals needed by the ‘clean energy’ sector. There are more slaves today than there were at the peak of the Atlantic slave trade (though chattel slavery is largely extinct).
Yes myriad reasons not mentioned in the original comment. “culture, and geography, and trade, and inventiveness, and entrepreneurialism,” as if pre-colonial African kingdoms and Asians and pre-Columbian Americans did not also exhibit these?