The highest court of the United Nations stressed on Wednesday “the urgent and existential threat raised by climate change”, since it began to read an opinion on the legal obligations of the states to take measures.
It is likely that the non -binding opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICI), also known as the World Court, determines the course of future climate action throughout the world.
“Greenhouse gas emissions are unequivocally caused by human activities that are not territorially limited,” Judge Yuji Iwasawa said. The reading of the opinion was ongoing and the court had not yet announced its conclusions.
Before the ruling, the supporters of the climatic action gathered outside the ICJ, singing: “What do we want? Climate justice! When do we want it? Now!”
Although it is not binding, the deliberation of the 15 CIJ judges in The Hague, however, will carry the legal and political weight and future climatic cases could not ignore it, legal experts say.
“It is very important, it could be one of the most consistent legal decisions of our times due to the scope of the problems that they have, which are directed to the heart of climate justice,” said Joie Chowdhury, main lawyer of the International Environmental Law Center.
The two questions that the UN General Assembly asked the judges to consider: What are the obligations of the countries under international law to protect the climate from greenhouse gas emissions? And what are the legal consequences for countries that damage the climate system?
In two weeks of hearings last December in the ICJ, the rich countries of the Global North told the judges that the existing climatic treaties, including the 2015 Paris Agreement, which are largely binding, should be the basis for deciding their responsibilities.
Developing nations and small islanders defended stronger measures, in some cases legally binding, to stop emissions and largest emitters of greenhouse gases for climate warming to provide financial aid.
Paris Agreement
In 2015, at the end of UN conversations in Paris, more than 190 countries committed to finding efforts to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
The agreement has not been able to stop the growth of world emissions of greenhouse gases.
At the end of last year, in the most recent EMISSION GUNPER REPORTThat takes a balance of the promises of the countries to address climate change compared to what is needed, the UN said that current climatic policies will result in a global warming of more than 3 ° C above the pre -industrial levels for 2100.
As activists seek to hold companies and governments, climate -related litigation have intensified, with almost 3,000 cases presented in almost 60 countries, according to the June figures of the Grantham Research Institute of London on climate change and the environment.
So far, the results have mixed.
A German court in May launched a case between a Peruvian farmer and the German energy giant RWE, but his lawyers and environmentalists said the case, which lasted for a decade, remained a victory for climatic cases that could stimulate similar demands.
Earlier this month, the Inter -American Court of Human Rights, which has jurisdiction over 20 Latin American and Caribbean countries, said in another advisory opinion that its members must cooperate to address climate change.
Activists say that Wednesday’s opinion should be a turning point, even if the ruling itself is an advisor.
The ruling could also facilitate that states consider other states to account for climatic problems such as pollution or emissions.
“The court can affirm that climatic inaction, especially because of the main issuing issues, is not simply a political failure but a violation of international law,” said Fijian Vishal Prasad, one of the law students who pressed the Vanuatu government in the South Pacific Ocean to take the case to the ICJ.
Although theoretically it is possible to ignore an ICJ ruling, lawyers say that countries are usually reluctant to do so.
“This opinion is applying binding international law, with which countries have already committed,” said Chowdhury.
