“They tell us that we are the leaders of tomorrow, but what future do we have if our islands disappear?” It is Dylan Kava, a young man from Fiji who is crying out to the judges of the International Court of Justice to set legal limits to combat the climate emergency. The cry that comes from the small islands of the Pacific is desperate: “Our home disappears under the relentless rise of the sea.”
The judges in The Hague will begin hearing testimonies and arguments from 98 countries and twelve international organizations starting this Monday in what will be the largest case for climate justice so far. The UN decided to unanimously ask the court to issue an opinion on the obligations of States with respect to climate change. The resolution, which will not be binding, but will have relevance from a political point of view, seeks to establish legal foundations for climate justice.
The process began thousands of kilometers away, in the remote islands of the Pacific, with the organization of the student movement against the “devastation of their paradise.” In March 2019, 27 law students from eight of these island countries launched a campaign to convince Pacific Islands Forum governments to take the destruction they are suffering to the International Court of Justice. Now the Pacific Island Students Against Climate Change organization has members at all levels of education (from schools to postgraduates) and representation in all Pacific Islands.
Their cause is championed by the Government of Vanuatu, one of those small islands, located 1,750 kilometers from Australia. With 334,000 inhabitants, it is one of the main victims of climate change, despite the fact that it only emits 0.02% of greenhouse gases. Cyclones, storms and rising sea water put 64% of that island in danger. It was Vanuatu that took the matter to the UN.
“We hope for a framework to hold responsible those whose emissions have caused the climate crisis in which we find ourselves”
“We need decisive action,” said Ralph Regenvanu, the special envoy for Climate Change of this Pacific nation, at the ceremony that social organizations held in The Hague on the eve of the hearings, which will continue until next year. December 13. “Through the Court, we not only expect a legal interpretation but a framework to hold responsible those whose emissions have caused the climate crisis in which we find ourselves today,” defended Regenvanu.
A notice to those responsible for emissions
The judges will issue an opinion within a few months of the case in which countries from Vanuatu to the United States, including China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Brazil, among dozens of others, including Spain, will participate. The concern of social organizations is that the governments of the most polluting states will oppose an ambitious ruling from the court, which is what the promoters and the UN Secretary General himself, António Guterres, expect: “Those who contributed the least to the climate crisis are already facing hellish weather and high waters. For some countries, climate threats are a death sentence.”
The opinion issued by the International Court of Justice will be a boost in the face of negotiations that are becoming increasingly difficult, as seen at COP29 in Baku, where a minimum financing agreement was reached: rich countries will pay 300,000 million dollars annually to the developing world to pay for climate action starting in 2035. It is insufficient for those who already see their land, their communities and “the survival of their cultures” threatened, as Vishal Prasad recalled, director of the Pacific Island Students Against Climate Change organization.
The first pronouncements
The Hague resolution will also be decisive for climate justice, which is beginning to have the first pronouncements to cordon off those responsible for the emergency. In recent years, the number of climate causes has doubled worldwide.
The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea ruled in May of this year that greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere constitute pollution of the marine environment and that States have the legal obligation to take all measures to prevent, reduce and control their impact, even by going beyond instruments such as the UN convention on climate change or the Paris Agreement.
The great victory came in Strasbourg: the European Court of Human Rights concluded in a pioneering ruling that climate change violates fundamental rights. The case – against Switzerland – was launched by a group of older women, grouped in the Verein KlimaSeniorinnen association, who denounced the consequences that “increasingly frequent and intense” heat waves have on their health. The European judges considered that the country failed to comply with its obligations and ruled that the right to respect for private and family life had been violated. “We will surrender,” promised Pia Hollestein, one of its representatives, present at the event in The Hague. And the fight against climate change is global.
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