The decision of the top UN courts on climate change could impact global responses – countries
The United Nations Supreme Court on Wednesday issued a historic view on climate change, a decision that could set legal benchmarks for global legal benchmarks.
After years of lobbying by vulnerable island countries, who fear that they will disappear with rising sea water, the UN General Assembly advises the International Court of Justice in 2023, a non-binding but important foundation for international obligations.
A team of 15 judges is tasked with answering two questions. First, under international law, which countries are obliged to protect the climate and the environment from anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions? Secondly, what are the legal consequences when government actions or lack of actions seriously damage the government’s actions and environment?
“The bet will not be higher,” Vanuatu Attorney General Arnold Kiel Loughman told the court at a weekly hearing in December.
Over the decade to 2023, sea levels have risen by about 4.3 cm (1.7 inches), with a portion of the Pacific still rising. The world has also heated 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 degrees Fahrenheit) due to the combustion of fossil fuels.
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Vanuatu is one of the small countries that drive international legal intervention amid the climate crisis, but it affects more island countries in the South Pacific.
“A deal between states on an international level is not fast enough,” Vanuatu’s climate change minister Ralph Regenvanu told the Associated Press.
Any ruling by the Hague-based court is unbinding advice and cannot directly take the rich nation to help the struggling country. However, this is more than a powerful symbol, as it can serve as the basis for other legal proceedings, including domestic lawsuits.
Joie Chowdhury, a senior attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law, told AP.
Militants can file lawsuits against their own country because they do not comply with the decision and countries can return to the International Court of Justice to be held accountable to each other. Everything the judge said would be used as the basis for other legal instruments, such as investment agreements.
The United States and Russia are both major oil-producing countries and they firmly oppose court demands for emission reductions.
Simply speaking, the latest in a series of legal victories in the island nation. Earlier this month, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights held that states not only have legal obligations to avoid environmental harm, but also to protect and restore ecosystems. Last year, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that countries must better protect their people from climate change.
In 2019, the Dutch Supreme Court ruled that when a judge ruled that protecting the potentially devastating effects of climate change is human rights, and that the government has the responsibility to protect its citizens.
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