True climate justice demands a reckoning with colonialism

The African Union declared 2025 to beryllium the “Year of Justice for Africans and People of African Descent done Reparations”. The African Court connected Human and Peoples’ Rights has an accidental to marque that much than conscionable a slogan, arsenic it considers the existent petition for an advisory sentiment earlier it, connected states’ quality rights obligations successful the discourse of clime change. It has an accidental to contented a landmark sentiment affirming the nexus betwixt colonialism and the harms of clime alteration to people(s) crossed the continent. Such an sentiment would people a large measurement guardant from the International Court of Justice and successful Africa’s combat for reparative justice.

On July 30, 2025, Amnesty International published a report recounting how, during the French assemblage epoch successful Madagascar, authorities deliberately unleashed harmful, genetically manipulated cochineal parasites crossed immoderate 40,000 hectares (98,850 acres) of a drought-resilient vegetation successful the Androy portion successful Madagascar’s heavy South. Between 1924 and 1929, the parasites destroyed astir 100km (62 miles) of vegetation screen each year.

This was not a insignificant ecological loss. The vegetation had sustained the Antandroy radical for generations, providing nutrient and helping to sphere groundwater done chronic droughts. Its demolition erased a captious earthy defence strategy against those droughts. More than a period later, the demolition has near the Antandroy radical exposed to recurring wide hunger, displacement, and decease whenever drought strikes.

Furthermore, Madagascar’s droughts are being intensified by human-induced clime change, driven mostly by high-income historically precocious emitting countries, specified arsenic France – the precise assemblage powerfulness that near the Antandroy radical vulnerable.

When subject leads and authorities lags

The technological nexus betwixt colonialism and clime vulnerability has agelong been established. In 2022, the Intergovernmental Panel connected Climate Change (IPCC), which advises the United Nations connected the subject related to clime change, highlighted not lone however colonialism contributed to the clime situation itself but besides however its enduring harms person near galore communities successful erstwhile colonies much susceptible to clime effects, specified arsenic droughts, floods, cyclones and rising oversea levels.

Effective clime enactment needs much than science; it besides requires governmental backing for states, peculiarly those with greater historical work for clime change, to enactment connected mitigation, adaptation and financing strategies. When this doesn’t happen, countries with minimal humanities work who are suffering the astir from clime alteration person nary enactment but to question clarity and accountability done a satellite court, successful this case, the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The ICJ has the capableness to power governmental processes. The ICJ, successful particular, tin lend planetary legitimacy to technological evidence. Indeed, the ICJ has sizeable motivation and persuasive authority, often shaping the behaviour of states connected the planetary governmental stage.

The accidental for the ICJ to exert this power arrived erstwhile successful March 2023 Vanuatu, itself a erstwhile colony of some France and the United Kingdom, rallied the UN General Assembly to petition an ICJ advisory sentiment connected states’ ineligible obligations regarding clime change. Formerly colonised nations successful Africa and elsewhere joined the effort, galore explicitly highlighting how assemblage harms and clime injustices are interconnected.

When the ICJ delivered its sentiment in July 2025, determination was a glaring omission. The connection “colonialism” appeared obscurity successful narration to clime change, neither successful the main sentiment nor successful the 12 abstracted opinions and declarations issued by its judges. The ICJ besides sidestepped a captious question: how acold backmost successful clip tin claims for clime obligations reach? This question is crucial, due to the fact that erstwhile assemblage powers often assertion that colonialism was not prohibited nether planetary instrumentality erstwhile it was practised and, therefore, nary ineligible work to supply reparations exists. They besides often support their relation successful causing clime alteration by arguing that they were unaware of the harm and faced nary ineligible limits connected greenhouse state emissions until recently.

Customary planetary instrumentality shatters the assemblage defence

Despite its regrettable soundlessness connected the question of colonialism, the ICJ offered immoderate reassurances to countries that are bearing the combined consequences of colonialism and clime alteration by affirming that states’ clime alteration obligations are not confined to clime treaties. They besides flow from customary planetary law, which dictates that a state’s work tin widen into the contiguous if a wrongful enactment continues to impact the enjoyment of quality rights, careless of erstwhile that enactment primitively occurred.

Engaging customary planetary instrumentality is important due to the fact that it reshapes the question that immoderate Court ought to inquire astir assemblage clime legacies. In this context, the applicable question is not whether states tin beryllium held accountable for the intertwined impacts of colonialism and clime change. Nor is it however acold backmost we should look to delegate work for greenhouse state emissions, which linger successful the ambiance for centuries. The question is: are harms rooted successful the assemblage era, including those that signifier clime vulnerability, causing quality rights violations today?

The elemental reply is yes. The greenhouse gases present heating our satellite and fuelling a cascade of rights violations person been trapped successful the ambiance for generations. They are the nonstop bequest of the fossil substance burning that powered the concern emergence of erstwhile assemblage powers since the 1750s and their station World War I & II economical recovery. In Madagascar, the French assemblage administration’s demolition of the drought-resilient vegetation that had agelong sustained the Antandroy radical stripped them of their earthy defence against recurring droughts. This forced them into dependence and inexpensive labour wrong the assemblage cash-crop economy. All this helped grow the forging of Europe’s economical paths and markets, which were powered by the burning of fossil fuels, releasing unprecedented quantities of greenhouse gases, which caused clime change.

The ICJ’s fractional measure: Opening the door, past closing it

By affirming that customary planetary instrumentality tin crushed claims for climate-related reparations, the ICJ appeared to unfastened the doorway for clime demands tied to assemblage harms. Yet, successful the aforesaid opinion, the ICJ reinforced 1 of the precise arguments agelong utilized by those who benefited from colonialism to cull responsibility.

The ICJ stated that afloat reparation — done restitution, compensation oregon restitution — is imaginable lone erstwhile a “sufficiently nonstop and definite causal link” tin beryllium proven betwixt the wrongful enactment and the injury. But making specified a definitive nexus betwixt innumerable acts of assemblage unit and the impacts they had successful exacerbating climate-change vulnerability is astir impossible.

The request of specified a definitive nexus arsenic a precondition for assemblage reparations, without qualifying however it could practically enactment for colonialism and clime alteration impacts, provides screen to countries similar France. In Madagascar’s case, for instance, the French authorities could easy argue: “It has been a period since the assemblage demolition of drought-resistant vegetation, and factors similar colonisation maturation person played a relation and the enactment of greenhouse state emissions and demolition of ecosystems was not regarded arsenic a violation. How tin France beryllium held legally liable and realistically beryllium expected to quantify reparations today?” As UN experts person observed, “the top obstruction to reparations for colonialism and slavery is that the main beneficiaries of some deficiency the governmental volition and motivation courageousness to marque them a reality.”

Will the African tribunal echo the ICJ’s silence, oregon interruption it?

Since May 2025, the African Court connected Human and Peoples’ Rights has been reviewing a request for an advisory opinion connected the quality and peoples’ rights obligations of African states successful the discourse of clime change. This is much than a procedural exercise. The petition highlights the narration betwixt clime alteration and colonialism – a constituent that quality rights actors mean to emphasise successful their submissions earlier the court.

This is truthful a accidental for the Court to articulate what the ICJ would not: that the combat for clime justness is inextricably linked with Africa’s combat for reparative justice. Such a stance would laic bare the plight of those inactive suffering the intersecting harms of colonialism and clime alteration specified arsenic the Antandroy. It would lend to breathing beingness into the Year of Reparations and align with the African Commission’s 2022 Resolution connected Africa’s Reparations Agenda, which provides the African Court a mechanics done which to propulsion African states to prosecute justness for the commercialized and trafficking of enslaved Africans, colonialism and assemblage crimes, and radical segregation. The possibilities stay open. It whitethorn besides promote them to instrumentality to the ICJ to springiness the satellite tribunal an accidental to redeem itself.

The views expressed successful this nonfiction are the authors’ ain and bash not needfully bespeak Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.