Martha Wardrop: 'Landmark ruling strengthens climate justice efforts'
This ruling arises from the demands of a group of 27 Pacific Island law students and island nations supported by a coalition of civil society, Indigenous Peoples, and 130 states across the world.
The Vanuatu government has been a significant force behind this first-ever legal opinion on climate change.
The International Court of Justice has taken action to put high emitters on notice.
This advisory opinion will shape international standards and is now a turning point that can strengthen a struggling multilateral system for climate action.
Governments are legally obligated to protect their citizens from climate change.
If there is a failure to take decisive action to protect the climate, through continued fossil fuel production and consumption, and granting fossil fuel exploration licences, this can be considered as a government acting 'wrongfully'.
This affirms climate treaties, such as the 2015 Paris Agreement, which impose binding obligations, and the court has elevated environmental protection to a core state responsibility.
The UK government has a legal duty to speed up the transition towards a cleaner, greener economy and block any new licences for the extraction of fossil fuels.
It is also clear that human rights must be at the heart of climate action by governments because climate breakdown affects our rights to health, homes, and livelihoods.
This court has recognised that wealthy countries like the UK are responsible for ongoing and historic pollution.
Therefore, there is a special responsibility for the UK government to act and to offer compensation to countries and communities already suffering from floods, droughts, and rising sea levels.
We have to acknowledge that the young Pacific Islanders have stepped up with courage and made sure that communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis have been listened to by the world's highest court.
The International Court of Justice has upheld the call for greater accountability at this crucial time of climate upheaval, marked by extreme weather events and record-breaking heating.
The high-emitting states now must address their climate responsibilities head-on.
Governments are obliged under law to act, and act now.
This requires agreement at COP30 in Brazil to draw the line against fossil fuels overheating the planet.
We are watching how countries respond to this advisory opinion by the court.
We can urge our governments to immediately revise their national climate plans, so we can put the world safely on the path to limiting global warming to 1.5℃.
The advisory opinion must compel rapid fossil fuel phase-outs and the necessity for climate finance, including reparations for loss and damage.
As climate change intensifies alongside rising living costs and ongoing conflicts worldwide, communities will continue to work together to demand climate action and a just future for all.
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Since its founding in 1945, the ICJ has always favoured circumspection over speed in its role as ultimate arbitrator between nations. 'The ICJ is known for its slow deliberation. It is 80 years old and it wants to work in a certain way,' said Iva Vukušić, assistant professor in international history at Utrecht University. After Israel presents its defence next January, each side would typically be given time to put together a further round of arguments to counter each other's points and new developments. 'The second round is usually around six months each, so that's another year, and then that brings us to January 2027,' said Michael Becker, who served as a legal officer at the ICJ from 2010 to 2014, and who is now assistant professor of international human rights law at Trinity College Dublin. 'If everything were to go smoothly and you don't have any other intervening events or interruptions to the procedure, you'd have a hearing sometime in 2027, probably early enough in the year so that you could have a judgment by the end of the year.' A range of factors could drag the case into 2028 however, including demands by other countries to intervene. The ICJ does have a tool to address the mismatch between the tempo of its proceedings and the urgency of catastrophic situations like Gaza. In 2024, it issued three sets of 'provisional measures', in the form of instructions to Israel, responding to South Africa's requests. In January last year, the ICJ ruled that the claim of genocide was 'plausible' and acknowledged 'the catastrophic humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip is at serious risk of deteriorating further before the court renders its final judgment'. It ordered Israel to 'take all measures within its power' to stop acts of genocide, and incitement to genocide from being committed and take 'immediate and effective measures' to allow aid into Gaza. In March 2024 it added more measures demanding humanitarian assistance should be allowed to enter, and in May, it ordered the Israeli offensive on the southern city of Rafah to cease and the Rafah crossing from Egypt to be reopened to aid deliveries. Israel almost entirely ignored the provisional measures and rejected the genocide accusation as 'outrageous and false', and South Africa has sought no further measures, despite the periods of total blockade Israel imposed on Gaza this year. According to a source close to its legal team, the intense pressure from Washington has had an effect. In February, Donald Trump issued an executive order halting aid to South Africa, castigating it for its stand at the ICJ, made alleging, without evidence, that the country's white Afrikaners were 'victims of unjust racial discrimination'. The South African government has insisted it has no intention of dropping the Gaza case however. Quite apart from the ICJ's deliberately ponderous pace, is the very high standard of proof required to arrive at a genocide judgment. On the page, the 1948 Genocide Convention does not set a high bar, defining genocide as the intentional destruction 'in whole or in part' a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. In its interpretation of the convention however, the ICJ has required 'fully conclusive' evidence that an accused state had genocide intent in committing mass killings and there were no other feasible, competing motives, such as counter-insurgency or territorial acquisition. Under that standard, the court has yet to rule against any country for genocide. The current panel of judges have an opportunity to moderate that daunting standard in a genocide case which will precede Gaza – Myanmar's atrocities against the Rohingya people, which is expected to start hearings early next year. Even without a change on the ICJ benchmark, a growing number of legal scholars believe that in its actions in Gaza, Israel is crossing even that high bar. 'While it's really slow and frustrating, one of the benefits of [the ICJ's deliberate pace] is that when the court, almost inevitably I think at this point, finds that Israel has been committing genocide, we will be able to say that there is no doubting this conclusion,' McIntyre said. Whatever the outcome, many experts in international humanitarian law argue that a fixation on a genocide verdict could be a dangerous distraction, delaying decisive action by the international community as it waits for an ICJ verdict while demonstrable crimes against humanity are allowed to continue. 'The problem with this kind of fixation is it contains a kind of underlying suggestion that if it doesn't meet the legal definition of genocide, it's OK,' Becker said. 'It causes people to lose sight of the fact that if we're talking about genocide, we're already in a very grave situation to start with. It shouldn't actually require genocide for there to be an obligation to step in or to take action.'
