World’s Biggest Climate Case Begins in The Hague – Mother Jones

Protesters exterior the Worldwide Courtroom of Justice, the place judges will spend the subsequent two weeks in a sequence of hearings analyzing the obligations nations have within the battle towards local weather change, December 2, 2024.. ANP/ZUMA

This story was initially revealed by Grist and is reproduced right here as a part of the Local weather Desk collaboration.

The world’s greatest local weather case begins at The Hague within the Netherlands at present. Oral arguments can be heard by the Worldwide Courtroom of Justice (ICJ), which is able to contemplate what obligations United Nations member states have underneath worldwide regulation to guard the planet from greenhouse gasoline emissions for future generations.

The case begins lower than two weeks after negotiations collapsed on the UN’s annual worldwide local weather convention, COP29, in Azerbaijan, leading to a local weather finance settlement that’s been broadly criticized as insufficient. It additionally marks the top of the hottest 12 months on document, punctuated by quite a few excessive climate occasions together with lethal floods and hurricanes pushed by local weather change.

“The stakes should not excessive, they’re devastatingly excessive,” stated Julian Aguon, an lawyer representing Vanuatu, the Pacific nation main the case. “It’s a chance to lastly deliver the promise of local weather justice nearer inside attain.” 

The ICJ was established after World Struggle II as a judicial mechanism for mitigating conflicts between United Nations member states and continues to arbitrate disputes issuing advisory opinions decoding and clarifying worldwide regulation. Such opinions are non-binding, however are nonetheless significant as a result of they make clear binding regulation, such because the that means of worldwide treaties together with the 2015 Paris Settlement that sought to cap the severity of world warming. In 1994, a judgment from the court docket on warfare between Libya and Chad over disputed territory prompted Libya to withdraw from Chad, and helped result in a peace settlement. 

However the court docket’s rulings should not all the time efficient. Earlier this 12 months, the ICJ dominated that Israel ought to finish its occupation of the Palestinian territories instantly and make reparations to affected peoples. The occupation has continued, illustrating the boundaries of the ICJ’s energy. As well as, huge polluters like China and the US have rejected the court docket’s obligatory jurisdiction, and so a ruling might apply to them extra narrowly.

The court docket will now determine what if any authorized penalties such nations ought to face for contributing to local weather change, each from what they’ve completed and what they haven’t completed. That might embrace affirming that huge polluters have a authorized obligation to pay reparations.

The marketing campaign to deliver the case to the ICJ was initiated in 2019 by 27 regulation college students on the College of the South Pacific in Fiji. It has now grown to be the most important case within the 77-year historical past of the ICJ and can encompass oral arguments from 98 nations and 12 worldwide nongovernmental organizations.

So as to get on the ICJ’s docket, the scholars who started the case first needed to persuade Vanuatu’s authorities to again their marketing campaign for an advisory opinion, then get different Pacific states on board by bringing the problem earlier than the Pacific Discussion board, the premier diplomatic physique within the Oceanic area. 

The pandemic in 2020 interrupted their marketing campaign, stopping the youth from touring to United Nations’ local weather conferences to advocate for his or her agenda. However the group moved on-line and managed to drum up help from Pacific island states, Caribbean nations, nations in Africa and Latin America, and dozens extra. Slowly the group constructed sufficient diplomatic help to get on the agenda on the UN Basic Meeting, and later, constructed such a widespread backing that the Meeting authorised the decision calling for an ICJ advisory opinion on local weather change by consensus.

“How the regulation is formed from right here on is determined by this second, is determined by the ICJ,” stated Vidal Prashad, one of many scholar campaigners primarily based in Fiji. “We’ve the chance to go away behind a extra succesful worldwide authorized regime than we inherited.” 

Forward of this week’s oral arguments, younger folks have continued their campaigning, serving to to gather witness testimonies from Indigenous Pacific peoples on how they’re at the moment being harmed by rising seas and local weather change-fueled excessive climate occasions. They’re additionally serving to the governments who plan to current on the ICJ to craft their arguments and guarantee they put forth the strongest, most progressive case. Prashad flew from Fiji to The Hague, the place the youth’s five-year grassroots effort is lastly reaching its conclusion. 

Joie Chowdhury, a senior lawyer on the Heart for Worldwide Environmental Regulation, which has offered authorized help for the case, stated a positive ruling from ICJ would assist local weather activists maintain polluting nations accountable. Youth activists may cite the ruling in future local weather litigation towards their governments. Politicians may use the ICJ’s opinion to push for sanctions towards nations who fail to conform, and diplomats may level to the doc at least customary in subsequent 12 months’s world local weather change negotiations. “Failure to adjust to authorized penalties within the face of such devastating local weather hurt, that’s not simply being in contravention of the regulation, it’s unconscionable,” Chowdhury stated. 

She famous that plenty of nations speak huge about local weather motion, however this week’s oral arguments may illuminate what huge polluters actually take into consideration the thought of being legally liable for his or her greenhouse gasoline emissions, one thing that might present extra readability on what the boundaries to local weather motion are. And even when it’s not in massive nations’ curiosity to place up cash for local weather reparations, it’s of their curiosity to look to respect the treaties that they’ve already agreed to, which the ICJ ruling may assist make clear. 

“Local weather justice is about accountability,” Chowdhury stated. “Local weather hurt has been completed, there was information about this, and there have to be redress for frontline communities. And for this court docket to essentially make clear that there’s a proper to treatment and reparation for local weather hurt, that’s actually necessary.”

“It’s going to have ethical weight,” stated Arnold Kiel Loughman, the lawyer common of Vanuatu, who plans to handle the court docket. “We’re doing this for the good thing about the worldwide group.”

Local weather change witness testimonials from throughout the Pacific underscore the price of doing nothing. One village in Papua New Guinea has been compelled to maneuver 4 instances resulting from sea stage rise, and is within the midst of its fifth and remaining relocation. “I say remaining, as a result of there are merely no extra inland (locations) to go,” Aguon stated. 

Such local weather impacts have been existential for Indigenous Pacific peoples whose cultures are intimately linked to the meals they develop, the waters they fish, and the lands they name dwelling.

“We’ve a lot to lose,” stated Prashad from the College of the South Pacific. “Entire nations are standing to lose their complete identities.”