[[link removed]]

THE INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE TAKES ON CLIMATE CHANGE  
[[link removed]]


 

Elizabeth Kolbert
December 14, 2024
The New Yorker
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ Thanks to the maneuverings of the tiny nation of Vanuatu, the
entire industrialized world is effectively on trial in The Hague. _

Young villagers play in the Pacific Ocean, on the island of Tanna, in
Vanuatu, in 2019., Mario Tama

 

The nation of Vanuatu consists of eighty-three islands arrayed in the
shape of a shaggy “Y” in the South Pacific. Some of the islands
are deserted; some have glorious white beaches, and some active
volcanoes. Vanuatu has fewer people than Wichita. Its economy is
smaller than Vermont’s, and its military consists of three hundred
volunteers. But, diplomatically speaking, it punches above its weight.

Thanks to the maneuverings of Vanuatu, the entire industrialized world
effectively went on trial this month in The Hague. The case, before
the fifteen-member International Court of Justice, is about climate
change. Do countries have a legal as well as a moral obligation to
prevent a planetary disaster? And, if they violate those obligations,
what should the consequences be? Roughly ninety countries submitted
written testimony in the case, and a similar number sent
representatives to the Netherlands to make oral arguments. The
proceedings have been called “landmark,” “historic,”
“momentous,” and a “watershed moment.”

“I choose my words carefully when I say that this may well be the
most consequential case in the history of humanity,” Ralph
Regenvanu, Vanuatu’s special envoy for climate change and
environment, told the court. “Let us not allow future generations to
look back and wonder why the cause of their doom was condoned.”

The United States has a vexed relationship with the I.C.J., often
called the World Court, which is the judicial arm of the United
Nations. The U.S. actively participates in cases before the court, but
reserves the right to reject any judgments that it doesn’t like.
(The I.C.J., which hears civil cases, is distinct from the
International Criminal Court, also in The Hague, which the U.S. is not
a party to.)

In the climate case, the U.S. has a lot at stake. Although no country
is actually named in the proceedings, the U.S., as the world’s top
historical emitter, is clearly the leading target. Next up is China,
then, in descending order, the nations of the European Union, Russia,
Brazil, and Indonesia. “A handful of readily identifiable states
have produced the vast majority” of the problem, Regenvanu said.
“Yet other countries, including my own, are suffering the brunt of
the consequences.”

In The Hague, the U.S. has argued that there’s really no need for
the case. The world already has a mechanism for dealing with climate
change, and that is the travelling road show of international
negotiations. “The United States encourages the court to ensure that
its opinion preserves and promotes the centrality of this regime,”
Margaret Taylor, the State Department’s legal adviser, told the
judges. In a rare display of unity, China made much the same argument.
So did Saudi Arabia. “The specialized treaty regime on climate
change provides a complete answer to the questions” before the
court, the Saudis’ representative, Prince Jalawi Al Saud, said.

Everyone in the wood-panelled courtroom, including, presumably, the
Americans, Chinese, and Saudis, could see the flaws in this argument.
The “regime” Taylor alluded to began with the so-called Earth
Summit, which took place in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. The summit
produced a global compact to “prevent dangerous anthropogenic
interference with the climate system,” but the treaty left vague
both the meaning of this phrase and the mechanism for achieving it. In
2015, after more than two decades of wrangling, world leaders agreed
to try to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees
Fahrenheit). This threshold, it is widely agreed, will soon be
breached. Meanwhile, global CO2 emissions continue to rise; in 2024,
they are expected to hit a new high. Emissions of methane, an even
more potent greenhouse gas, are also increasing. At this point, only
action at an unprecedented pace and scale can prevent the world from
warming by a disastrous 2 degrees Celsius, and, under current
policies, the temperature increase could easily exceed 3 degrees
Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century.

“We’re out of time,” the U.N. Secretary-General António
Guterres declared shortly before the last round of negotiations
[[link removed]] began,
in mid-November. The session was held in Azerbaijan, a country where
oil and gas sales account for two-thirds of the government budget, and
was generally regarded as a bust. In the words of one commentator,
“The assessment has to lie between failure and disaster.” The
triumph of Donald Trump, who has pledged to increase fossil-fuel
production and to (yet again) pull the U.S. out of the negotiating
process, makes progress over the next four years seem unlikely.

It is precisely because this “regime” has proved so
woefully—indeed, world-historically—inadequate that Vanuatu
pressed for the case now before the World Court. As James Hansen
[[link removed]], the
former head of _NASA_’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, put it
in his testimony in The Hague, “Climate change must be brought to
the International Court of Justice because young people, developing
nations, and indigenous people have nowhere else to turn.” 

Rulings from the I.C.J. are only advisory. Nevertheless, the court’s
opinion, expected early next year, could be, as the
journal _Nature_ put it, a “game changer.” Globally, more than
two thousand climate cases have already been filed. (The bulk of these
are before U.S. courts, but several hundred have been filed in other
countries.) A strongly worded ruling would likely lead to many more
filings. Courts all around the world look to the I.C.J.’s decisions
for guidance, as do other international tribunals. “The I.C.J.
proceedings could establish that addressing climate change is not just
a matter of political will or voluntary pledges—it is a binding
legal responsibility,” Grethel Aguilar, the director general of the
International Union for Conservation of Nature, a group also
testifying in The Hague, said.

For Vanuatu, though, even a ruling that counts as a victory won’t
really amount to one. The nation, considered one of the world’s most
vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, has had to relocate six
villages owing to sea-level rise, and the government has identified
dozens of others that may have to soon move. More losses have already
become inevitable. “Climate displacement of populations is the main
feature of our future,” Regenvanu has said. “That’s the
reality.” ♦

* Climate Change
[[link removed]]
* International Court of Justice
[[link removed]]
* Vanuatu
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]
Manage subscription
[[link removed]]
Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]