On 23 July, an astonishing event occurred, the improbable climax of a six-year journey that ended up offering the world a lifeline to escape the worst of a hothouse future. Lindsay Wood discusses an incredible global outcome that had humble beginnings.
In 2019, 27 law students in the Pacific Islands needed a study project and, anxious about the fate of their islands under sea level rise, hit on a wildly ambitious idea. What if they could obtain a legal opinion from the highest court in the world on the duties states hold to each other for avoiding, or compensating for, climate harm?
To cut a long journey short, with the sponsorship of the Vanuatuan Government (representing just 300,000 people), the idea was pursued successfully with the Pacific Islands Forum, and then the UN General Assembly.
With rare unity, the UN unanimously referred the case to the International Court of Justice (ICJ). In turn, also unanimously, the 15 judges of the world’s highest court released an opinion that brought sharp clarity to global climate responsibilities that had previously been mired in uncertainty and misinformation.
I’m not going to dive deep into the legalities, but this will be a catalyst for changes on a scale we haven’t seen before. It imposes legal obligation on matters thought just to be aspirational; it demands urgency and ambition as matters of reality and not just spin. And it makes states responsible for the greenhouse gases its people emit, or even contribute to emitting.
There’s a biggie for transport, too: fossil fuels are singled out at every level. “Failure of a state to take appropriate action to protect the climate system from emissions – including through fossil fuel production, fossil fuel consumption, the granting of fossil fuel exploration licences or the provision of fossil fuel subsidies – may constitute an internationally wrongful act which is attributable to that state.”
That sends a clear signal that a small island nation at the end of the world ignores at its peril.
There’s bound to be backlash, especially from big, vested interests, but the sooner we get our heads around this new reality, the better we’ll play our part in securing the lifeline to a better future.
Court cases based on climate harm are nothing new – there are about 2000 currently on the books globally. And, in a world-first, the government is already in the firing line for allegedly setting unlawful targets with over-reliance on tree planting.
In fact, I believe the ICJ’s findings create just the opportunity Climate Minister Simon Watts needs to strut his stuff and show us just how good a climate minister he can be. The court has given him unequivocal and compelling reasons to raise the decarbonisation bar to where he knows it should be, but has previously been too fearful, or too constrained, to do so.
If ever we needed motivation on steroids to react to the climate crisis, those 27 students and 15 judges have just offered it. It won’t be easy, but the alternative – of falling short – will be far, far worse. More on that next time.
