Climate change reached the world’s highest court: a moment of hope for environmental justice

Climate change reached the world’s highest court: a moment of hope for environmental justice



Arnold Loughman grew up watching his grandfather plant yam in Tanna, Vanuatu, by digging a deep hole in the soil and, months later, during harvest season, come back to proudly check how big it had grown. “That doesn’t happen anymore”, he mourns today. The land has turned so hot and the rains fall so heavily that, when returning to the hole, there is hardly any harvest to pick. This has not only altered the basic diet for Ni-Vanuatu people, but also their traditional rituals, such as the circumcision ceremony, which often gets canceled due to the scarcity of the sacred crop.

Loughman shared this memory with us from the city of The Hague. He is the Attorney General of Vanuatu and traveled to The Netherlands in December 2024 as part of the Pacific Islands’ delegation leading a request for the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to rule in favor of climate change action.

The oral hearings for what has been considered the world’s biggest climate case took place from December 2 to 13, but has its origins in 2019. Back then, a group of law students from 8 Pacific Island countries undertook a plan to request an Advisory Opinion from the world’s highest court in terms of climate change. They realized the main existing tool to hold States accountable for their climate harms, the 2015 Paris Agreement, was falling short in its purpose. The central aim of the agreement is to substantially reduce global greenhouse gas emissions to enable the long-term global average surface temperature increase to be kept well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century and pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5°C. However, despite all the rhetoric around climate action at COPs, 2025 started with the worrisome news that the world experienced by February 2024 the first 12-month period to exceed 1.5°C as an average.

“When the Paris Agreement was signed, the youth of the world looked up to it as an instrument of hope. Today, the entire COP process has been hijacked by large emitters, turning it into a polluters’ safe harbor”, said Cynthia Houniuhi, one of the Pacific Island students, in her speech to the ICJ judges, which happened to take place a couple of weeks after COP 29 in Baku concluded with disappointing results.

The students sent letters to a list of Pacific governments, and Vanuatu was the first one to get on board. Convincing them was not a difficult task, since the consequences of climate change have been an increasing concern for their leaders. Attorney Loughman gives one example for his country, where the frequency and intensity of cyclones has increased due to rising temperatures: “We live in a constant state of emergency. The budget that should be invested in development is pretty much diverted to cyclone relief.”

During the next five years, the case grew like a snowball: all the 18 Pacific Island territories endorsed the request for an advisory opinion from the ICJ, then the United Nations General Assembly unanimously supported the plea, and 91 States sent written submissions to the Court. Along the way, young leaders and initiatives across the globe joined the campaign under the umbrella organization World’s Youth for Climate Justice (WYCJ).
Why is it historical?

Contrary to judgments, and except in rare cases, the Court’s advisory opinions are not binding. However, they carry great legal weight and moral authority. They provide authoritative interpretations of international law on various issues, helping to clarify complex legal questions that might not have been fully addressed before. States might adjust their policies or legal stances to align with these opinions to uphold international norms or to avoid international criticism. The ICJ has issued 28 Advisory Opinions since its establishment in 1945.

Besides being one of the largest cases the ICJ has held in terms of the number of parties involved, why has this process created so much hope? The answer could lie, to a great extent, in the questions the judges will answer in the advisory opinion: first, what are the obligations of States to ensure Earth’s protection from greenhouse emissions? And, on the flipside, what are the consequences for States that fail to comply with those duties? These are questions that touch upon an existential issue for humanity and the role of law in addressing it.

Unlike the annual COP negotiations, in this case States might find it harder to deviate from their commitments. In the words of Vishal Prasad, also a member of the Pacific Island Students Fighting Climate Change, “we have a chance for the ICJ to tell the whole world what their obligations are, what they need to do in order to address the climate crisis.” Such obligations will not be limited to the Paris Agreement but should, ideally, originate from other legal frameworks, for example, in terms of human rights. And, for the first time, it could be the moment to determine the consequences of inaction.

Another key difference lies in the power dynamics. While the COP meetings take place in terms of negotiations between States, where some of them have clearly more power, in this courtroom the judges listened to all States under equal terms. “When it comes to negotiating climate finance, what chance does a small island state have? International law provides an opportunity for small states who otherwise wouldn’t have that leverage”, recalls Attorney Loughman.

While factors like the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and challenges in implementing ICJ decisions fuel skepticism towards international law, the ICJ’s climate change hearings stand as a crucial test. It could redefine state accountability, pushing against doubt to prove that international law can enforce global cooperation for our planet’s future.
The hearings

The 10 days of hearings at the Peace Palace opened with Vanuatu’s intervention. Lawyers, government officials, scientists and young activists from the island reminded the jury of the evident inequality inherent in climate change’s impact. More than enough evidence was presented on how some of the wealthiest economies not only contribute the most to the problem, but also keep fueling it by promoting, subsidizing and expanding fossil fuel production. “The cost of fossil fuel subsidies by states reached 7 trillion dollars in 2022, (which represents) 23 times what developing countries tried to secure for climate finance in the COP 29”, pointed out Jorge Viñuales, professor of law and environment at Cambridge University, who made part of Vanuatu’s delegation.

During the following days, the discussion revolved around arguing whether or not the Paris Agreement is a mechanism binding and comprehensive enough to hold States accountable for their carbon emissions. Most of the highly polluting nations, including the United States, Germany, Russia, United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia and Australia, argued against the need for additional mechanisms beyond the UN framework. Most of these countries’ positions did not come as a surprise, except perhaps for Germany, which in spite of being supportive along the whole AO process, showed an unexpected backlash by denying the need for State obligations outside the PA, such as compensations for climate change harms. For Noemi Zenk-Agyei, a half-German, half-Ghanaian young activist part of WY4CJ, “that was a real slap in the face. As someone who is part of the African diaspora, you realise that this government doesn’t really care about the suffering of your people.”

In contrast, many Global South nations built on the arguments of the Pacific islands. Some of them addressed the Court for the first time ever, calling on the rights to self determination, survival, and a healthy environment, such as Tuvalu, the first nation about to vanish and move to the metaverse due to climate change. Likewise, most low and middle-income nations requested concrete measures to achieve climate finance and receive reparations in forms such as debt relief, ecosystem restoration and, most importantly, non-repetition. This would not only mean committing to stop emissions or fossil fuel subsidies, but implies a deeper transformation, as proposed by the Cook Islands’ representative: “It is no secret that our international legal system, as well as our interconnected economic, financial and political systems, are deeply implicated in the climate crisis we face today. (…) To truly guarantee cessation and non-repetition, States must dismantle these systems and imagine and build new ones.”
The importance of stories

We are the places. This idea emerged repeatedly in the interventions made by the States most hit by climate change, but also outside the courtroom, where historical encounters were taking place as well. Hundreds of climate activists from all the Global South gathered in demonstrations, vigils, talks and a museum to share the stories of how climate change has been breaking the tight link between people and territories.

Flora Vano, a Ni-Vanuatu environmental leader, shared the memory of how cyclone Pam in 2015 ripped off everything it touched on the island. She did it during a candle vigil a few steps away from the Peace Palace, where people with similar experiences sat in a circle and lit a candle to symbolize the hope for the ongoing fight against climate change.


Climate change comes and doesn’t give you a warning. It comes and it takes from you. Gardens were destroyed, hunger came. Some of the crops that villages were not able to eat, we ate. The airport got shut down. The wharfs got broken. There’s no boats coming in. There’s no food. There’s no food. So the ancestors were all saying, was it a curse what occurred in our land? Did we do something wrong that God punishes us?

Flora passed the word to Kjeld Kroon, an environmental activist from Bonaire, a Caribbean island which is part of the kingdom of The Netherlands. Kjeld fights for reparations and climate policies for his island while living in The Netherlands, which he calls “the lion’s den”. He shared the paradox of how, while Bonairians experience the impacts of sea-level rise, its European colonizer continue to gain worldwide recognition as experts in water management.


There’s a beach in the western part of our island where I would go with my mom, my grandmother, everyone. And my mother also grew up going to that beach with her ancestors and her peers. And it’s just very painful to see that it’s pretty much gone now because of the sea level rising.

Days after the vigil, a small theatre in The Hague was adapted as the People’s Museum for Climate Justice, a space where survivors of climate disasters were able to share their testimonies through some of the objects that symbolize their life and death struggle. One of them was Frank Melgar, a young teacher and Greenpeace volunteer from The Philippines, who guided visitors and narrated his memories of typhoon Yolanda, in 2013:


I was with my grandmother when the typhoon hit us. Our house is made of strong old wood, but it still trembles when the wind hits us. We were soaked wet, shivering with the cold. It was a four-hour battle. And when the morning comes, you see the intensity. There’s no roof in the house, but you don’t feel hungry at all. What you feel is emptiness.

For the students, activists and survivors leading the petition of an advisory opinion from the ICJ, sharing with each other these testimonies was as important as the discourses presented to the judges. As Vishal Prasad concluded in his intervention on the last day of hearings, “we are fighting for the right to continue telling our stories.”
Escalating the Fight

As we advance to the next phase of the ICJ’s advisory process, and while we await similar rulings from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, it becomes clear that these legal forums are vital pieces in the larger puzzle of adapting international law to the monumental challenge of climate change. In a world where global political winds often blow against decisive action on the climate emergency, these judicial arenas remain essential battlegrounds. They are key spaces where people from all over the world must continue to rally, ensuring that humanity’s fight for a livable future does not wane but grows stronger with each attempt of political leaders to shirk their duties.