World Court gets involved in climate change issues

The World Court in The Netherlands has gotten involved in the global row over climate change, climate justice, and who should pay for polluting the planet as the law lords listened to an address from a leading Caribbean climate change advocate in The Hague recently.

Prime Minister Gaston Browne of Antigua had the opportunity to address the court as he made a case for the plight of his and other Caribbean Community nations to be legally addressed on the devastating effects of climate change and increasingly wayward weather systems.

The grouping of Small Island Developing States (SIDS) has asked the ICJ to furnish an advisory opinion on the obligations of states on climate change linked to the increasing vulnerability levels of SIDS states.

Browne told the court, “Antigua and Barbuda stands in solidarity with other vulnerable nations, particularly our fellow small island states. Together, we endured the worst crisis that we did not create. But today, we also stand with the millions across the globe who are looking to this court for a path forward, for clarity, justice, and certainly hope.”

His appearance at the court comes five months after the SIDS grouping had recorded international success in linking polluters to the responsibility of paying for their actions. Two years ago, Antigua and a slew of other small island nations, many from the Caribbean and the Pacific, had successfully petitioned the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea for an advisory opinion on the obligations of states to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. Earlier this year, the tribunal ruled that major polluting nations are legally bound to protect oceans and countries from catastrophic harm and fallout from climate change.

Arguing his case, Browne said “Antigua is a small island state on the front line of a global climate emergency, which existing action has not adequately addressed the crisis that is devastating our lives and our future.” He said that Hurricane Irma in 2017 with winds of more than 200 miles per hour had “added tremendously to our debt burden, as the country had struggled to find resources to rebuild from the damage.”

He contended that international law requires states to avoid causing harm to others. “Yet, global emissions continue to rise,” he said, adding “that as the threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius is being crossed, the very existence of SIDS is threatened by the failure of the polluting countries to act. No participant has disputed that greenhouse gas emissions from human activity are causing and will continue to cause significant harm to the climate system, the populations globally, and the environment.”

He made his presentation just a few days after the 2024 hurricane season ended with 18 named storms, 11 of which developed into storms. Five of these made landfall, including Hurricane Beryl, which was the earliest superstorm ever to have formed in July, four weeks after the start of the season. It left a trail of death and destruction from Grenada to Jamaica in the North Caribbean.