By AFP - Agence France Presse
UN high court to open unprecedented climate hearings
Jan HENNOP
The world's top court will next week begin unprecedented hearings aimed at finding a “legal model” for how countries should protect the environment from harmful greenhouse gases - and what the consequences are if they fail to do so.
Starting on Monday, lawyers and representatives from more than 100 countries and organizations will present their proposals to the International Court of Justice in The Hague - the largest number ever recorded.
Activists hope that the ICJ judges' legal opinion will have far-reaching consequences in the fight against climate change.
But others fear that the UN-backed request for a non-binding advisory opinion will have a limited impact and that the UN's top court will take months, or even years, to issue the opinion.
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 criticized the rich polluters' pledge as insultingly low, and the final agreement did not mention a global promise to abandon planet-warming fossil fuels.
- 'No distant threat' -
Last year, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution in which it referred two important questions to the ICJ judges.
Firstly, what obligations do states have under international law to protect the Earth's climate system from greenhouse gas emissions?
Secondly, what are the legal consequences under these obligations when states, “by their acts and omissions, have caused significant damage to the climate system and other parts of the environment?”
The second question was also linked to the legal responsibilities of states for damage caused to small and more vulnerable countries and their populations.
This applies especially to countries threatened by rising sea levels and more severe weather patterns in places like the Pacific Ocean.
“For us, climate change is not a distant threat,” said Vishal Prasad, director of the Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change (PISFCC) group.
“It is reshaping our lives right now. Our islands are at risk. Our communities are facing disruptive changes at a pace and scale that generations before us have not known,” Prasad told journalists a few days before the hearings began.
By launching a campaign in 2019 to take the climate issue to the ICJ, Prasad's group of 27 students led the consensus among Pacific island nations, including his home island of Fiji, before it was taken to the UN.
Last year, the General Assembly unanimously adopted the resolution to request an advisory opinion from the ICJ.
- 'Legal project' -
Joie Chowdhury, senior attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law, based in the US and Switzerland, said climate advocates did not expect the ICJ opinion to “provide very specific answers.”
Instead, she predicted that the court would provide “a legal template of sorts, on which more specific questions can be decided,” she said.
The judge's opinion, which she hopes will be issued next year, “will inform climate litigation at the domestic, national, and international level.”
“One of the issues that is important, since all the legal issues depend on it, is what conduct is illegal,” said Chowdhury.
“That's very important for these proceedings,” she said.
Some of the world's biggest carbon polluters - including the world's three largest greenhouse gas emitters, China, the United States, and India - will be among the 98 or so countries and 12 organizations and groups expected to present their allegations.
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, organizations such as the EU and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries are expected to make their statements.
“With this advisory opinion, we are not just here to talk about what we fear we will lose,” said PISFCC's Prasad.
“We are here to talk about what we can protect and what we can build if we stand together,” he said.
jhe/ric/fg
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