World Court weighs legal duties of states on climate change's ‘urgent, existential threat'

South China Morning Post

4 days ago

The United Nations' highest court on Wednesday underlined 'the urgent and existential threat posed by climate change' as it started to read out an opinion on the legal obligations of states to take action. The non-binding opinion by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), also known as the World Court, is likely to determine the course of future climate action across the world.
'Greenhouse gas emissions are unequivocally caused by human activities which are not territorially limited,' Judge Yuji Iwasawa said. The reading of the opinion was ongoing, and the court had not yet announced its conclusions.
Ahead of the ruling, supporters of climate action gathered outside the ICJ, chanting: 'What do we want? Climate justice! When do we want it? Now!'
Although it is non-binding, the deliberation of the 15 judges of the ICJ in The Hague will nevertheless carry legal and political weight, and future climate cases would be unable to ignore it, legal experts say.
'It is so important, it could be one of the most consequential legal rulings of our times because of the scope of the issues that it touches, which run to the very heart of climate justice,' said Joie Chowdhury, senior lawyer at the Centre for International Environmental Law.
The two questions the UN General Assembly asked the judges to consider were: 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? In two weeks of hearings last December at the ICJ, wealthy countries of the Global North told the judges that existing climate treaties, including the 2015 Paris Agreement, which are largely non-binding, should be the basis for deciding their responsibilities.