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An advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice last year left no doubt that states have a legal obligation to prevent significant harm to the climate system, and that a failure to do so carries legal consequences. Now, a new United Nations resolution seeks to put this ruling into practice.
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We are under no illusions that the ICJ’s ruling will be difficult for some countries to implement. But we cannot ignore the costs of inaction. This is a critical moment, not just for the climate but also for the future of international cooperation. The entire postwar, post-colonial multilateral order is under significant pressure. Large states are withdrawing from international agreements and withholding funding from multilateral organizations. Bilateral deals are replacing collective frameworks. Many fear that the global architecture of rules, norms, courts, and international accountability is crumbling before our eyes.
In this context, reaffirming the role of institutions the ICJ would be a shot in the arm for multilateralism. What Vanuatu, a country of only around 340,000 people, has accomplished shows that the system can still function. We took a legal question to the appropriate institution, and that institution did its job. The process was slow, and we faced plenty of resistance along the way. But justice prevailed. All states had a chance to argue before the Court, whether they were for or against the motion, and the outcome was clear.
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The ruling gave vulnerable people around the world hope and lent new momentum to multilateral climate action, especially the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change—the process that has organized the international response to climate change for more than 30 years. Everyone participating in the annual UN Climate Change Conferences (COPs) now knows where the world court stands. The obligation to cooperate on meaningful solutions is not merely political and moral, but legal.
ing weeks of negotiations, our new resolution has been shaped by input from almost every UN member state and facilitated by a core group of countries from every region of the world. That breadth of engagement is no accident. It shows that the appetite for a truly global response to climate change remains strong, even at this fraught geopolitical moment.
There is no defensible reason for states to vote against the resolution. If we fail here, we will be signaling to current and future generations that we have moved from a system built on cooperation to one governed by power alone. We will be conceding that pressure from vested interests can derail the progress we have made toward guaranteeing our collective survival.
It is no secret that powerful vested interests want to delay the transition away from fossil fuels. Despite the rapidly falling costs of renewables, they have no problem leveraging their money and influence to frustrate efforts to mitigate climate change. Small island states Vanuatu are particularly vulnerable to these bad-faith actors.
Still, the world is now witnessing the consequences of relying on a fossil-fuel economy. While Vanuatu has long been vulnerable to growing climate-related risks cyclones and drought, we are currently experiencing a different kind of storm. Those fueling up at gas stations in Port Vila are seeing the same high prices as hundreds of millions of others around the world. We are all learning the hard way what a failure to phase out fossil fuels looks .
The conflict in the Middle East reminds us that fossil fuels do not just heat the planet; they also inflame conflicts. The sooner all of us move away from such volatility, the better.
We all have a duty to keep fighting for international cooperation, because the alternative—a world that stops trying to solve its hardest problems collectively—would be worse than the current one. Vanuatu and its many -minded partners will continue to push forward, not only on behalf of our own communities but on behalf of yours, too. Billions of people are already facing, or will soon face, rising seas, intensifying storms, deadly wildfires, and the relentless erosion of everything we have built.
The law has spoken. The question confronting every state is simple: We know the rule of law applies to climate change, but do you intend to act on it?
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