The world\u2019s top court will next week start unprecedented hearings aimed at finding a \u201clegal blueprint\u201d for how countries should protect the environment from damaging greenhouse gases \u2014 and what the consequences are if they do not. From Monday, lawyers and representatives from more than 100 countries and organisations will make submissions before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague \u2014 the highest number ever. Activists hope the legal opinion from the ICJ judges will have far-reaching consequences in the fight against climate change. But others fear the UN-backed request for a non-binding advisory opinion will have limited impact \u2014 and it could take the UN\u2019s top court months, or even years, to deliver. The hearings at the Peace Palace come days after a bitterly negotiated climate deal at the COP29 summit in Azerbaijan, which said developed countries must provide at least $300 billion a year by 2035 for climate finance. Poorer countries have slammed the pledge from wealthy polluters as insultingly low and the final deal failed to mention a global pledge to move away from planet-heating fossil fuels. \u2018No distant threat\u2019 The UN General Assembly last year adopted a resolution in which it referred two key questions to the ICJ judges. First, what obligations did states have under international law to protect the Earth\u2019s climate system from greenhouse gas emissions? Second, what are the legal consequences under these obligations, where states, \u201cby their acts and omissions, have caused significant harm to the climate system and other parts of the environment?\u201d The second question was also linked to the legal responsibilities of states for harm caused to small, more vulnerable countries and their populations. This applied especially to countries under threat from rising sea levels and harsher weather patterns in places like the Pacific Ocean. \u201cClimate change for us is not a distant threat,\u201d said Vishal Prasad, director of the Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change (PISFCC) group. \u201cIt is reshaping our lives right now. Our islands are at risk. Our communities face disruptive change at a rate and scale that generations before us have not known,\u201d Prasad told journalists a few days before the start of the hearings. Launching a campaign in 2019 to bring the climate issue to the ICJ, Prasad\u2019s group of 27 students spearheaded consensus among Pacific island nations including his own native Fiji, before it was taken to the UN. Last year, the General Assembly unanimously adopted the resolution to ask the ICJ for an advisory opinion. \u2018Legal blueprint\u2019 Joie Chowdhury, a senior lawyer at the US and Swiss-based Center for International Environmental Law, said climate advocates did not expect the ICJ\u2019s opinion \u201cto provide very specific answers\u201d. Instead, she predicted the court would provide \u201ca legal blueprint in a way, on which more specific questions can be decided,\u201d she said. The judges\u2019 opinion, which she expected sometime next year, \u201cwill inform climate litigation on domestic, national and international levels.\u201d \u201cOne of the questions that is really important, as all of the legal questions hinge on it, is what is the conduct that is unlawful,\u201d said Chowdhury. \u201cThat is very central to these proceedings,\u201d she said. Some of the world\u2019s largest carbon polluters \u2014 including the world\u2019s top three greenhouse gas emitters, China, the United States and India \u2014 will be among some 98 countries and 12 organisations and groups expected to make submissions. On Monday, proceedings will open with a statement from Vanuatu and the Melanesian Spearhead Group which also represents the vulnerable island states of Fiji, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands as well as Indonesia and East Timor. At the end of the two-week hearings, organisations including the EU and the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries are to give their statements. \u201cWith this advisory opinion, we are not only here to talk about what we fear losing,\u201d the PISFCC\u2019s Prasad said. \u201cWe\u2019re here to talk about what we can protect and what we can build if we stand together,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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