\n<\/p>\n
Leaders in the Caribbean have hailed the outcome of the international court of justice (ICJ) climate change case as a \u201chistoric legal victory\u201d for small island states everywhere.<\/p>\n
Several countries in the region had provided evidence to the ICJ case, which ended this week with a landmark advisory opinion that could see states ordered to pay reparations if they fail to tackle fossil fuels and prevent harm to the climate system.<\/p>\n
Describing the opinion as a \u201chistoric legal victory for small states\u201d that are bearing the worst impacts of climate change, the prime minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG), Ralph Gonsalves, told the Guardian it would strengthen the Caribbean\u2019s negotiating power.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat is very interesting is that it says that the obligations laid out in the important [climate change] treaties are not simply procedural,\u201d he said. \u201cThey create substantive legal obligations.\u201d<\/p>\n
In recent years the Caribbean has been plagued by a string of catastrophic hurricanes. Last year Hurricane Beryl demolished more than 90% of buildings in parts of multi-island SVG and left thousands homeless and without running water, electricity and food.<\/p>\n
Gonsalves said the advisory opinion \u2013 which said a clean, healthy and sustainable environment is a human right \u2013 connects climate action treaties such as the Paris agreement to other international laws such as those governing human rights.<\/p>\n
Echoing Gonsalves\u2019 sentiments, the Bahamas\u2019 attorney general, Ryan Pinder, praised the ICJ for taking a \u201cvery strong position\u201d that allowed countries to \u201cspeak and argue about the adverse effects of the climate crisis on its people\u201d and potentially provided more legal options to small states.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt certainly opens up the positions of \u2026 states like the Bahamas to go into other areas of the United Nations and other multilateral institutions that are human rights-focused,\u201d he told the Guardian.<\/p>\n
Referring to the catastrophic Hurricane Dorian in 2019, which killed more than 70 people and caused an estimated US$3.4bn worth of damage, Pinder said: \u201c[This] had a significant impact on the human rights of our people, whether that be displacement \u2026 the right to an adequate standard of living \u2026 [or] access to food, water and housing.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll of those are fundamental human rights that the ICJ has now recognised as a significant component of the adverse effects of climate change.\u201d<\/p>\n
The advisory opinion\u2019s focus on reparations, he said, was important for the Bahamas, because it was about the obligation of major polluters to restore a country and its assets if it suffered the effects of a climate change-related disaster.<\/p>\n
Human rights and climate justice lawyer Nikki Reisch said it was possible to connect devastating climatic events to climate change and to the states responsible and pursue justice.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe science on attribution and causation is strong and only getting stronger. The court made clear that there is no technical barrier to connecting climate destruction to its causes, to the continued pollution from fossil fuels and destruction of carbon sinks,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe science is there, and this decision confirms that the law is too.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reisch added that countries were responsible for past and present environmental breaches.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe court really rejected the attempts of the biggest cumulative emitters like the United States and others to sweep history under the rug and ignore the decades of climate destruction, of fossil fuel production and pollution, of colonialism that laid the foundations for the devastation that climate change is wreaking in so many parts of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the UK, some MPs criticised the ICJ opinion, with the shadow foreign secretary, Priti Patel, describing it on X as a \u201cmad\u201d decision, adding that the ICJ had \u201clost its core purpose and is now joining political campaigns and bandwagons\u201d. <\/p>\n
Dr Justin Sobion, who coordinated the Caribbean\u2019s ICJ submissions, said the opinion was an interpretation of climate obligations under international law, including global agreements that countries such as the UK \u2013 which recognise there is a climate emergency \u2013 have ratified.<\/p>\n
Pinder said: \u201cI\u2019m not sure, given some of the commentary we\u2019ve seen from larger developed countries and countries that were in the Industrial Revolution, that [the ICJ advisory] is really going to change their opinions.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added that the \u201crather unfortunate\u201d comments from some political leaders in the UK on the ICJ opinion indicated that \u201cmultilateralism is still going to be a significant challenge\u201d.<\/p>\n
Pinder and Gonsalves said their countries were reviewing the ICJ opinion \u2013 which UN member states instructed the ICJ to produce in 2023 after years of campaigning by Pacific island law students and diplomacy led by Vanuatu \u2013 and considering how to work with other countries in the region on next steps.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis has given us an excellent platform,\u201d Gonsalves said. \u201cWe have \u2026 to follow through with some heavy lifting, to do negotiations. At the end of the day, this is about life, living and production for all of us on planet Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Leaders in the Caribbean have hailed the outcome of the international court of justice (ICJ) climate change case as a \u201chistoric legal victory\u201d for small island states everywhere. Several countries in the region had provided evidence to the ICJ case, which ended this week with a landmark advisory opinion that could see states ordered to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12217,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[458,186,5779,1022,5780,2961,807,571,98,1561,1259],"class_list":{"0":"post-12216","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-caribbean","9":"tag-climate","10":"tag-hail","11":"tag-historic","12":"tag-icj","13":"tag-island","14":"tag-leaders","15":"tag-ruling","16":"tag-small","17":"tag-states","18":"tag-win"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}