Top UN court says treaties compel wealthy nations to curb global warming
In an opinion hailed by small island states and environmental groups as a legal stepping stone to make big polluters accountable, the International Court of Justice said countries must address the "urgent and existential threat" of climate change.
"States must cooperate to achieve concrete emission reduction targets," Judge Yuji Iwasawa said, adding that failure by countries to comply with the "stringent obligations" placed on them by climate treaties was a breach of international law.
The court said countries were also responsible for the actions of companies under their jurisdiction or control.
Failure to rein in fossil fuel production and subsidies could result in "full reparations to injured states in the form of restitution, compensation and satisfaction provided that the general conditions of the law of state responsibility are met."
"I didn't expect it to be this good," Vanuatu's Climate Minister Ralph Regenvanu told reporters after the unanimous opinion by the ICJ, also known as the World Court, was read out.
Vishal Prasad, one of the law students that lobbied the government of Vanuatu in the South Pacific Ocean to bring the case to the ICJ, said: "This advisory opinion is a tool for climate justice. And boy, has the ICJ given us a strong tool to carry on the fight for climate justice."
Judge Iwasawa, who presided the panel of 15 judges, said that national climate plans must be of the highest ambition and collectively maintain standards to meet the aims of the 2015 Paris Agreement that include attempting to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit).
Under international law, he said: "The human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment is essential for the enjoyment of other human rights."
While the decision was stronger than most expected, its impact may be limited by the fact that the United States, the world's biggest historical greenhouse gas emitter, and second biggest current emitter behind China, has moved under President Donald Trump to undo all climate regulations.
With scepticism over climate change spreading in the U.S. and elsewhere, Judge Iwasawa laid out the cause of the problem and the need for a collective response in his two-hour reading of the court's opinion.
"Greenhouse gas emissions are unequivocally caused by human activities which are not territorially limited," he said.
Historically, rich industrialised countries have been responsible for the most emissions. Iwasawa said these countries had to take the lead in addressing the problem.
The court's opinion is non-binding, but it carries legal and political weight and future climate cases would be unable to ignore it, legal experts say.
"This is the start of a new era of climate accountability at a global level," said Danilo Garrido, legal counsel for Greenpeace.
Harj Narulla, Barrister specialising in climate litigation and counsel for Solomon Islands in the case, said the ICJ laid out the possibility of big emitters being successfully sued.
"These reparations involve restitution — such as rebuilding destroyed infrastructure and restoring ecosystems — and also monetary compensation," he said.
Wednesday's opinion follows two weeks of hearings last December at the ICJ when the judges were asked by the U.N. General Assembly to consider two questions: what are countries' obligations under international law to protect the climate from greenhouse gas emissions; and what are the legal consequences for countries that harm the climate system?
Developing nations and small island states at greatest risk from rising sea levels had sought clarification from the court after the failure so far of the 2015 Paris Agreement to curb the growth of global greenhouse gas emissions.
The U.N. says that current climate policies will result in global warming of more than 3 C (5.4 F) above pre-industrial levels by 2100.
As campaigners seek to hold companies and governments to account, climate‑related litigation has intensified, with nearly 3,000 cases filed across almost 60 countries, according to June figures from London's Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
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Reuters
10 hours ago
- Reuters
World Court climate opinion turns up the legal heat on governments
THE HAGUE, July 29 (Reuters) - A landmark opinion delivered by the United Nations' highest court last week that governments must protect the climate is already being cited in courtrooms, as lawyers say it strengthens the legal arguments in suits against countries and companies. The International Court of Justice, also known as the World Court, last Wednesday laid out the duty of states to limit harm from greenhouse gases and to regulate private industry. It said failure to reduce emissions could be an internationally wrongful act and, found that treaties such as the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change should be considered legally binding. While not specifically naming the United States, the court said countries that were not part of the United Nations climate treaty must still protect the climate as a matter of human rights law and customary international law. Only a day after the World Court opinion, lawyers for a windfarm distributed copies of it to the seven judges of the Irish Supreme Court on the final day of hearings on a case about whether planning permits for turbines should prioritise climate concerns over rural vistas. It is not clear when the Irish court will deliver its ruling. Lawyer Alan Roberts, for Coolglass Wind Farm, said the opinion would boost his client's argument that Ireland's climate obligations must be taken into account when considering domestic law. Although also not legally binding, the ICJ's opinion has legal weight, provided that national courts accept as a legal benchmark for their deliberations, which U.N. states typically do. The United States, where nearly two-thirds of all climate litigation cases are ongoing, is increasingly likely to be an exception as it has always been ambivalent about the significance of ICJ opinions for domestic courts. Compounding that, under U.S. President Donald Trump, the country has been tearing up all climate regulations. Not all U.S. states are sceptical about climate change, however, and lawyers said they still expected the opinion to be cited in U.S. cases. In Europe, where lawyers say the ICJ opinion is likely to have its greatest impact on upcoming climate cases, recent instances of governments respecting the court's rulings include Britain's decision late last year to reopen negotiations to return the Chagos Islands, opens new tab in the Indian Ocean to Mauritius. That followed a 2019 ICJ opinion that London should cede control. Turning to environmental cases, in a Dutch civil case due to be heard in October - Bonaire versus The Netherlands - Greenpeace Netherlands and eight people from the Dutch territory of Bonaire, a low-lying island in the Caribbean, will argue that the Netherlands' climate plan is insufficient to protect the island against rising sea levels. The World Court said countries' national climate plans must be "stringent" and aligned to the Paris Agreement aim to limit warming to 1.5 Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) above the pre-industrial average. The court also said countries must take responsibility for a country's fair share of historical emissions. In hearings last December at the ICJ that led to last week's opinion, many wealthy countries, including Norway, Saudi Arabia, and The United States argued national climate plans were non-binding. "The court has said (...) that's not correct," said Lucy Maxwell, co-director of the Climate Litigation Network. In the Bonaire case, the Dutch government is arguing that having a climate plan is sufficient. The plaintiffs argue it would not meet the 1.5C threshold and the Netherlands must do its fair share to keep global warming below that, Louise Fournier, legal counsel for Greenpeace International, said. "This is definitely going to help there," Fournier said of the ICJ opinion in the Bonaire case. The ICJ opinion said climate change was an "urgent and existential threat," citing decades of peer-reviewed research, even as scepticism has mounted in some quarters, led by the United States. A document seen by Reuters shows the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency may question the research behind mainstream climate science and is poised to revoke its scientific determination that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health. Jonathan Martel of the U.S. law firm Arnold and Porter represents industry clients on environmental issues. He raised the prospect of possible legal challenges to the EPA's regulatory changes given that an international court has treated the science of climate change as unequivocal and settled. "This might create a further obstacle for those who would advocate against regulatory action based on scientific uncertainty regarding the existence of climate change caused by anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases," he said. The U.S. EPA changes would affect the agency's regulations on tailpipe emissions from vehicles that run on fossil fuel. Legal teams are reviewing the impact of the ruling on litigation against the companies that produce fossil fuel, as well as on the governments that regulate them. The World Court said that states could be held liable for the activities of private actors under their control, specifically mentioning the licensing and subsidising of fossil fuel production. Notre Affaire à Tous, a French NGO whose case against TotalEnergies is due to be heard in January 2026, expected the advisory opinion to strengthen its arguments. "This opinion will strongly reinforce our case because it mentions (...) that providing new licences to new oil and gas projects may be a constitutional and international wrongful act," said Paul Mougeolle, senior counsel for Notre Affaire à Tous. TotalEnergies did not respond to a request for comment.
Daily Mail
15 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Anthony Albanese slams Israel over Gaza starvation claims
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The Guardian
17 hours ago
- The Guardian
After the Spike by Dean Spears and Michael Geruso review – the truth about population
As a member of the 8.23 billion-strong human community, you probably have an opinion on the fact that the global population is set to hit a record high of 10 billion within the next few decades. Chances are, you're not thrilled about it, given that anthropogenic climate change is already battering us and your morning commute is like being in a hot, jiggling sardine-tin. Yet according to Dean Spears and Michael Geruso, academics at the University of Texas, what we really need to be worried about is depopulation. The number of children being born has been declining worldwide for a couple of hundred years. More than half of countries, including India, the most populous nation in the world, now have birthrates below replacement levels. While overall population has been rising due to declining (mainly infant) mortality, we'll hit a peak soon before falling precipitously. This apex and the rollercoaster drop that follows it is the eponymous 'spike'. Most people's lives today are better than they ever were in human history, thanks to the progress, prosperity and brilliant ideas that have come with all those people. The more of us there are, the more human ingenuity there is – 'the ultimate renewable resource'. Spears and Geruso argue that future people who live alongside only a couple of billion others will have significantly worse lives than we have today. Stabilisation, not depopulation, they argue, is the right path for humanity. For that to happen, we need to be having more babies. After the Spike knocks down assumptions like skittles. Population fearmongers from Malthus to Paul Ehrlich are refuted, and evidence laid out to show what worldwide fertility is not linked to: changes in wealth, the invention of contraception or women's rights. Nor can government policies that force people to have, or not have, children do much to change long-term trends. This is as true for China's one-child policy as it is for Ceaușescu's banning of abortion in Romania, which only had short-term effects. Even when non-coercive governments support parents with childcare and comparatively generous parental leave, as in Sweden, these policies have not shifted the needle. Sweden will start to shrink in 2051. The strongest commonsense belief the authors tackle is the idea that lower birthrates are a good thing because the planet is burning and more people means worse climate change. In fact, climate change is such an urgent issue that depopulation will kick in far too late to make any serious impact. Not only that, but the difference between the contribution to climate change made by the current population versus the population at the top of the spike is not significant. Depopulation won't help the climate, then, but it will mean that there are far fewer of us left to deal with part two of cleaning up humanity's mess on Earth: removing excess greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. Creating a good life – whether that's finding cures for disease or ways to reverse environmental damage – relies on the ideas, work and progress produced by large, interconnected societies. Why, then, are we increasingly choosing to have fewer children? The answer is likely to be a combination of cultural, biological, economic and social factors, but the best unifying theory in After the Spike is to be found in a satirical headline from the Onion: 'Study Finds American Women Delaying Motherhood Because the Whole Thing Blows'. As life on Earth has come to offer more and more rich and interesting options for how to spend our time, the opportunity cost of parenting has become increasingly less attractive. There are now more ways to make a meaningful life with fewer or no kids, even if you did want them, as gen Z is well aware. If we agree that we ought to make life good for our descendants, and that this means supporting a stable, sizeable human population, how can we achieve this? The solution proposed by Spears and Geruso is no less than a total restructuring of society around care, in which parenting is so well supported socially, culturally, economically and medically that it is seen as a joy, not a relentless struggle. Were this to have been my reality a decade ago, I might have had the football team of tumbling, laughing babies I sometimes feel a pang for. Whether humanity can achieve anything like it in time to avert depopulation seems doubtful, but if there's one thing After the Spike leaves us with, it's the impulse to back ourselves. Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. after newsletter promotion After the Spike: The Risks of Global Depopulation and the Case for People by Dean Spears and Michael Geruso is published by Bodley Head (£20). To order a copy go to Delivery charges may apply.
