In landmark opinion, UN court says climate change an ‘existential threat’

The United Nations’ highest tribunal has said that countries indispensable conscionable their clime obligations – and that failing to bash truthful could interruption planetary law, perchance opening the doorway for affected nations to question reparations successful aboriginal ineligible cases.

In a groundbreaking advisory sentiment delivered astatine the Peace Palace successful The Hague connected Wednesday, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) said states indispensable enactment urgently to code the “existential threat” of clime alteration by cooperating to chopped emissions, pursuing done connected planetary clime agreements, and protecting susceptible populations and ecosystems from harm.

Reading the opinion, ICJ President Yuji Iwasawa said that greenhouse state emissions are “unequivocally caused by quality activities” and person cross-border effects.

“Failure of a authorities to instrumentality due enactment to support the clime strategy … whitethorn represent an internationally wrongful act,” Iwasawa said. He called the clime situation “an existential occupation of planetary proportions that imperils each forms of beingness and the precise wellness of our planet”.

Notably, the tribunal said a “clean, steadfast and sustainable environment” is simply a quality right. That paves the mode for different ineligible actions, including states returning to the ICJ to clasp each different to relationship arsenic good arsenic home lawsuits.

While the ICJ’s ruling is not binding, it said that countries themselves person an work to instrumentality binding measures to comply with clime treaties. But crucially, the ICJ said industrialised nations person a ineligible work to instrumentality the pb successful combating clime change, owed to their greater humanities work for emissions.

The judges besides affirmed that countries that signed the 2015 Paris Agreement indispensable guarantee their nationally determined contributions (NDCs), their idiosyncratic nationalist clime plans, are “progressive” and bespeak the “highest imaginable ambition,” successful enactment with the treaty’s purpose to bounds planetary somesthesia emergence to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).

The sentiment was instantly welcomed by biology groups. Oxfam clime alteration argumentation pb Nafkote Dabi said: “This ruling elevates nationalist clime commitments everyplace by confirming that countries indispensable trim emissions capable to support the cosmopolitan rights to life, food, wellness and a cleanable environment.

“All countries, peculiarly affluent ones, present person to chopped their emissions faster and signifier retired fossil fuels. Rich countries person to summation their financing to Global South countries to assistance them trim emissions and support their radical from past and aboriginal harm. This is not a privation database – it is planetary law.”

Danilo Garrido, ineligible counsel astatine Greenpeace International, said the sentiment marked the “start of a caller epoch of clime accountability astatine a planetary level”.

“The connection of the tribunal is clear: the production, depletion and granting of licences and subsidies for fossil fuels could beryllium breaches of planetary law,” helium said. “Polluters indispensable halt emitting and indispensable wage for the harms they person caused.”

Two cardinal questions

After years of lobbying by susceptible land nations fearing they could beryllium submerged nether rising oversea waters, the United Nations General Assembly asked the ICJ successful 2023 for an advisory opinion, a nonbinding but important ground for planetary obligations.

The landmark sentiment of the 15 judges of the ICJ – who each voted unanimously successful favour of the sentiment – volition transportation ineligible and governmental value and is apt to find the people of aboriginal clime enactment crossed the world, including whether polluters should beryllium made to wage for their actions.

President of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) Yuji Iwasawa (centre) and members contented their archetypal advisory sentiment connected states’ ineligible obligations to code clime change, The Hague, the Netherlands, July 23, 2025 [AFP]

Judges waded done tens of thousands of pages of written submissions and heard 2 weeks of oral arguments during the ICJ’s biggest-ever case, arsenic they sought to propulsion unneurotic antithetic strands of biology instrumentality into a definitive planetary standard.

The UN asked the ICJ, a UN tribunal that adjudicates disputes betwixt nations, to code 2 cardinal questions. What are states obliged to bash nether planetary instrumentality to support the situation from greenhouse state emissions present and for aboriginal generations? And what are the consequences for states whose emissions origin harm, peculiarly to susceptible land states?

The lawsuit was led by the Pacific land federation of Vanuatu and backed by much than 130 countries.

Before the ruling, supporters of clime enactment gathered extracurricular the court, chanting: “What bash we want? Climate justice! When bash we privation it? Now!”

Paris Agreement

In 2 weeks of hearings past December astatine the ICJ, the United States, the world’s biggest humanities emitter of greenhouse gases, on with different apical polluters, told the judges that existing clime treaties similar the 2015 Paris Agreement, which are mostly nonbinding, should beryllium the ground for determining their responsibilities.

The Paris Agreement does not explicitly supply for nonstop compensation for past harm caused by pollution, though astatine UN talks successful 2022, affluent nations did hold to create a fund to assistance susceptible countries woody with existent impacts caused by past pollution.

The Paris Agreement saw much than 190 countries perpetrate efforts to bounds planetary warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).

But it has failed to curb planetary greenhouse state emissions, and past year, the UN warned successful a study that existent clime policies volition effect successful planetary warming of much than 3C (5.4F) supra preindustrial levels by 2100.

Legal experts accidental the ruling is simply a triumph for tiny land and low-lying states that had asked the tribunal to clarify states’ responsibilities.

“The ICJ rejected arguments by the likes of the US and UK that governments are bound lone by clime treaties specified arsenic the Paris Agreement and did not person stronger obligations nether planetary law,” Dabi said.

“We present person a almighty instrumentality for holding countries to relationship for their obligations, particularly successful protecting the world’s astir marginalised radical and aboriginal generations of humanity.”