by Martin Haffner Associate Editor
Pacific Island leaders have tried almost everything—from giving speeches in knee-deep seawater, to shouting and crying —to draw attention to the impacts of climate change on their nations.
But as their attempts to spark drastic action have been met by slow-moving international climate negotiationsand the continued use of fossil fuels, interest in using legal levers to force large polluters to take action—or pay up—has grown.
For nearly a year now, Vanuatu has been trying to build a coalition to get the world’s highest court to issue a legal statement, or an advisory opinion, on climate change. And on Monday, the climate justice movement made important headway when Pacific Island nations threw their weight behind Vanuatu’s efforts.More than a dozen countries and territories in the Pacific region, including Australia and New Zealand, made public their support for the initiative soon after the Pacific Islands Forum meeting in Suva, Fiji, which concluded on July 14.
This comes amid an explosion in domestic litigation over the past few years across the globe, and interest in trying to leverage international courts to address the climate crisis has grown. For example, the Commission of Small Island States (COSIS) on Climate Change and International Law, aims to be the first to bring a case to the U.N. International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea to help determine the obligations of countries under international law and hold polluters accountable. Vanuatu, meanwhile, is hoping it can compel the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to issue an opinion on the obligations countries have to protect the rights of “present and future generations” from the harmful impacts of climate change.
