Tiny Vanuatu steps up to protect the climate

Although the International Court of Justice (ICJ) turned 80 this year, there is a sense in which it has never felt younger: In a David-versus-Goliath moment, the tiny Pacific Island state of Vanuatu recently changed international law forever by bringing the world’s most important issue before its highest court.

- Antara Haldar

The result is an ICJ advisory opinion on “the legal obligations of states in respect of climate change’, as requested —at Vanuatu’s urging — by the UN General Assembly (with 132 states cosponsoring the resolution).

The questions posed to the ICJ were as simple as they were seismic: What obligations, under international law, do states have to tackle climate change? And what are the legal consequences if they fail to do so?

The IC's answer was unequivocal. States have a duty to protect their citizens from climate change — a duty rooted not only in treaties like the Paris climate agreement, but also in environmental law, human-rights law, and customary international law. “Climate change,’ said the court's president, Yuji Iwasawa, speaking from the Peace Palace in The Hague, “is an urgent and existential threat of planetary proportions’ “The science is clear,’ notes John Silk, the Marshall Islands’ representative to the UN, “and now the law is, too”

The fact that this bold message was delivered unanimously by the highest court in the international system would have been extraordinary enough. But the path that led to this outcome is even more remarkable.

The most significant climate case ever heard by the ICJ began not in a ministry or a think tank, but in a classroom. It was conceived by a group of 27 Pacific Islands law students who formed the Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change (PISFCC), led initially by Solomon Yeo and then by Cynthia Houniuhi, both from the Solomon Islands, as well as Vishal Prasad from Fiji, Siosiua Veikune from Tonga, and others.