Chief cheers climate decision

The paramount chief of a volcanic island in Vanuatu said yesterday he was “very impressed” by a global court's declaration that countries must tackle climate.

- 

Vanuatu spearheaded the legal case at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, which found countries have a duty to protect against the “urgent and existential” threat of a warming planet.

“I'm very impressed,” George Bumseng, the highest chief of the Pacific archipelago’s cyclone-prone island of Ambrym, told AFP in the capital Port Vila.

“We have been waiting for this decision for a long time because we have been victims of this climate change for the past two decades,” he said at the country’s council of chiefs meeting house.

The chief recalled that his island was battered by three tropical cyclones in 2023, with twin cyclones Judy and Kevin striking in March of that year, followed by Lola in October.