Climate change hearings open at ICJ, court told handful of countries responsible for climate crisis

As climate change continues to be a significant problem worldwide, the representatives of vulnerable nations told judges at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that a handful of countries should be held legally responsible for the ongoing impacts of climate change. 

Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu’s special envoy for climate change and environment, was speaking during a hearing at the Peace Palace in The Hague on Monday and said that the responsibility for the climate crisis falls with a "handful of readily identifiable states" that had produced the vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions, however, stood to lose the least from these impacts. 

Regenvanu further said that Pacific islands such as Vanuatu have been dealing with the brunt of rising sea levels and increasing frequent and severe disasters, adding, "We find ourselves on the frontlines of a crisis we did not create."

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In March last year, the UN General Assembly unanimously approved a resolution, calling on the ICJ to provide an advisory opinion on what obligations states have to tackle climate change and what the legal consequences could be if they fail to do so. 

In the next two weeks, the international court will be hearing statements from 98 countries with the greatest historical responsibility for climate emergence, including Russia and Britain. 

The ICJ will also hear statements from the states that have contributed very little to global greenhouse gas emissions, however, still stand to face the impact of climate change, including Bangladesh and Sudan as well as Pacific island countries. 

Further, the world's biggest emitters, the US and China, will also make statements. 

Regenvanu told the court that states continue to emit huge amounts of greenhouse gases even though there have been "increasingly dire warnings" from scientists saying that the emissions had increased by over 50 per cent since 1990. 

Meanwhile, Ilan Kiloe, the legal counsel for the Melanesian Spearhead Group, a regional subgroup that includes Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu, said, “The harsh reality is that many of our peoples will not survive.”

Kiloe added that the climate crisis threatened the right of states to self-determination and that the injustice of climate change was inseparable from colonialism, which these countries had been subjected to by “a few readily identifiable states”.

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“We have not yet recovered from the ongoing violence … inflicted on us as we struggle to rebuild and assert ourselves within a system we did not create," he said. 

Notably, the ICJ is one of three international courts that have been assigned to produce an advisory opinion on climate change. The other two courts include the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (Itlos) and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

Itlos was the first court to complete its advisory opinion earlier this year, stating that greenhouse gases are pollutants and that states have a legal responsibility to control them that goes beyond the UNFCCC.

The inter-American court held hearings in Barbados and Brazil this year and is expected to be the next to publish its opinion. 

Further, the ICJ will take the advisory opinions from these two courts into account, as well as the significant court judgments from across the world. 

(With inputs from agencies)