The largest ever climate case’s unlikely origins

Over the next two weeks, just shy of 100 states gave oral statements to the court, alongside the World Health Organization, the International Union for Conservation of Nature and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), and other groups. 

Most states argued that a wide range of international law applied to climate change, including treaties and customary rules on due diligence, the duty to cooperate and the prevention of transboundary harm, as well as the right to self-determination. Human rights are being harmed, they argued, including those of children and future generations. 

Speaking on behalf of a group of Melanesian nations – which include Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu – all vulnerable to rising seas and temperatures, Regenvanu (now Vanuatu’s special envoy for climate change), pointed the blame squarely at “a handful of readily identifiable states”. These nations had produced the vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions but stood to lose the least from their impacts, Regenvanu said.

That “handful” hit back. Australia, the US, the UK, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, China and Russia maintained that any legal responsibility was limited exclusively to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Paris Agreement agreed under it in 2015. Many denied that human rights had any bearing on the questions at stake. Houniuhi says she found it hard to hear these arguments. “Being in the room… is different from seeing them on paper.”

Far from being an abstract problem deep in the future, representatives of nations across the Pacific and Caribbean, Africa, South America and Asia described the physical, economic and cultural impacts that climate change is already having on their people: deaths in the choking heat, poorer crops of staple foods of huge local significance such as yam and coconut, graveyards being washed away, forced relocations and livelihoods under threat.