Top UN court to open unprecedented climate hearings
By AFP
November 28, 2024
The International Court of Justice in The Hague - Copyright AFP Nick Gammon
Jan HENNOP
The world’s top court will next week start unprecedented hearings aimed at finding a “legal blueprint” for how countries should protect the environment from damaging greenhouse gases — and what the consequences are if they do not.
From Monday, lawyers and representatives from more than 100 countries and organisations will make submissions before the International Court of Justice in The Hague — the highest number ever.
Activists hope the legal opinion from the ICJ judges will have far-reaching consequences in the fight against climate change.
But others fear the UN-backed request for a non-binding advisory opinion will have limited impact — and it could take the UN’s top court months, or even years, to deliver.
The hearings at the Peace Palace come days after a bitterly negotiated climate deal at the COP29 summit in Azerbaijan, which said developed countries must provide at least $300 billion a year by 2035 for climate finance.
Poorer countries have slammed the pledge from wealthy polluters as insultingly low and the final deal failed to mention a global pledge to move away from planet-heating fossil fuels.
– ‘No distant threat’ –
The UN General Assembly last year adopted a resolution in which it referred two key questions to the ICJ judges.
First, what obligations did states have under international law to protect the Earth’s climate system from greenhouse gas emissions?
Second, what are the legal consequences under these obligations, where states, “by their acts and omissions, have caused significant harm to the climate system and other parts of the environment?”
The second question was also linked to the legal responsibilities of states for harm caused to small, more vulnerable countries and their populations.
This applied especially to countries under threat from rising sea levels and harsher weather patterns in places like the Pacific Ocean.
“Climate change for us is not a distant threat,” said Vishal Prasad, director of the Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change (PISFCC) group.
“It is reshaping our lives right now. Our islands are at risk. Our communities face disruptive change at a rate and scale that generations before us have not known,” Prasad told journalists a few days before the start of the hearings.
Launching a campaign in 2019 to bring the climate issue to the ICJ, Prasad’s group of 27 students spearheaded consensus among Pacific island nations including his own native Fiji, before it was taken to the UN.
Last year, the General Assembly unanimously adopted the resolution to ask the ICJ for an advisory opinion.
– ‘Legal blueprint’ –
Joie Chowdhury, a senior lawyer at the US and Swiss-based Center for International Environmental Law, said climate advocates did not expect the ICJ’s opinion “to provide very specific answers”.
Instead, she predicted the court would provide “a legal blueprint in a way, on which more specific questions can be decided,” she said.
The judges’ opinion, which she expected sometime next year, “will inform climate litigation on domestic, national and international levels.”
“One of the questions that is really important, as all of the legal questions hinge on it, is what is the conduct that is unlawful,” said Chowdhury.
“That is very central to these proceedings,” she said.
Some of the world’s largest carbon polluters — including the world’s top three greenhouse gas emitters, China, the United States and India — will be among some 98 countries and 12 organisations and groups expected to make submissions.
On Monday, proceedings will open with a statement from Vanuatu and the Melanesian Spearhead Group which also represents the vulnerable island states of Fiji, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands as well as Indonesia and East Timor.
At the end of the two-week hearings, organisations including the EU and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries are to give their statements.
“With this advisory opinion, we are not only here to talk about what we fear losing,” the PISFCC’s Prasad said.
“We’re here to talk about what we can protect and what we can build if we stand together,” he said.
By AFP
November 28, 2024
The International Court of Justice in The Hague - Copyright AFP Nick Gammon
Jan HENNOP
The world’s top court will next week start unprecedented hearings aimed at finding a “legal blueprint” for how countries should protect the environment from damaging greenhouse gases — and what the consequences are if they do not.
From Monday, lawyers and representatives from more than 100 countries and organisations will make submissions before the International Court of Justice in The Hague — the highest number ever.
Activists hope the legal opinion from the ICJ judges will have far-reaching consequences in the fight against climate change.
But others fear the UN-backed request for a non-binding advisory opinion will have limited impact — and it could take the UN’s top court months, or even years, to deliver.
The hearings at the Peace Palace come days after a bitterly negotiated climate deal at the COP29 summit in Azerbaijan, which said developed countries must provide at least $300 billion a year by 2035 for climate finance.
Poorer countries have slammed the pledge from wealthy polluters as insultingly low and the final deal failed to mention a global pledge to move away from planet-heating fossil fuels.
– ‘No distant threat’ –
The UN General Assembly last year adopted a resolution in which it referred two key questions to the ICJ judges.
First, what obligations did states have under international law to protect the Earth’s climate system from greenhouse gas emissions?
Second, what are the legal consequences under these obligations, where states, “by their acts and omissions, have caused significant harm to the climate system and other parts of the environment?”
The second question was also linked to the legal responsibilities of states for harm caused to small, more vulnerable countries and their populations.
This applied especially to countries under threat from rising sea levels and harsher weather patterns in places like the Pacific Ocean.
“Climate change for us is not a distant threat,” said Vishal Prasad, director of the Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change (PISFCC) group.
“It is reshaping our lives right now. Our islands are at risk. Our communities face disruptive change at a rate and scale that generations before us have not known,” Prasad told journalists a few days before the start of the hearings.
Launching a campaign in 2019 to bring the climate issue to the ICJ, Prasad’s group of 27 students spearheaded consensus among Pacific island nations including his own native Fiji, before it was taken to the UN.
Last year, the General Assembly unanimously adopted the resolution to ask the ICJ for an advisory opinion.
– ‘Legal blueprint’ –
Joie Chowdhury, a senior lawyer at the US and Swiss-based Center for International Environmental Law, said climate advocates did not expect the ICJ’s opinion “to provide very specific answers”.
Instead, she predicted the court would provide “a legal blueprint in a way, on which more specific questions can be decided,” she said.
The judges’ opinion, which she expected sometime next year, “will inform climate litigation on domestic, national and international levels.”
“One of the questions that is really important, as all of the legal questions hinge on it, is what is the conduct that is unlawful,” said Chowdhury.
“That is very central to these proceedings,” she said.
Some of the world’s largest carbon polluters — including the world’s top three greenhouse gas emitters, China, the United States and India — will be among some 98 countries and 12 organisations and groups expected to make submissions.
On Monday, proceedings will open with a statement from Vanuatu and the Melanesian Spearhead Group which also represents the vulnerable island states of Fiji, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands as well as Indonesia and East Timor.
At the end of the two-week hearings, organisations including the EU and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries are to give their statements.
“With this advisory opinion, we are not only here to talk about what we fear losing,” the PISFCC’s Prasad said.
“We’re here to talk about what we can protect and what we can build if we stand together,” he said.
Contentious COP29 deal casts doubt over climate plans
By AFP
November 28, 2024
The $300 billion a year pledged by wealthy countries for climate finance at COP29 was slammed as too little, too late - Copyright POOL/AFP Sarah Meyssonnier
Kelly MACNAMARA
A bitterly-fought climate finance deal reached at COP29 risks weakening emissions-cutting plans from developing countries, observers say, further raising the stakes for new national commitments due early next year.
The UN climate talks in Azerbaijan, which concluded last Sunday, were considered crucial to boosting climate action across huge swathes of the world after what will almost certainly be the hottest year on record.
Beginning days after the re-election of climate sceptic Donald Trump as US president, and with countries weighed down by economic concerns, the negotiations were tough-fought from the start and at one point seemed close to collapse.
Wealthy polluters ultimately agreed to find at least $300 billion a year by 2035 to help poorer nations transition to cleaner energy and prepare for increasing climate impacts such as extreme weather.
But it was slammed by developing nations as too little, too late.
Taking the floor just after the deal was approved, Nigeria’s representative Nkiruka Maduekwe dismissed the funding on offer as a “joke”, suggesting it would undermine national climate plans due early next year.
“$300 billion is unrealistic,” she said. “Let us tell ourselves the truth.”
Current climate plans, even if implemented in full, would see the world warm a devastating 2.6 degrees Celsius this century, the United Nations has said, blasting past the internationally agreed limit of 1.5C since the pre-industrial era.
A next round of national pledges is due in February and will cover the period to 2035, which scientists say is critical for curbing warming.
Mohamed Adow of Power Shift Africa, a Kenya-based think tank, said the COP29 talks produced not just a “low-ball” figure, but a delivery date of 2035 that falls at the end of the range for climate plans.
This “will certainly constrain the ability of developing countries to pledge ambitious emission cuts”, he told AFP, calling for an improved goal and other measures, like debt relief and technology support.
– ‘Our only chance’ –
Global emissions need to be reducing by more than seven percent every year “to avoid unmanageable global outcomes as the world breaches the 1.5C limit”, said Johan Rockstrom of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
“Our only chance is full focus on financing and implementing emission cuts now.”
Yet carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels — the main driver of global warming — are still rising, according to the Global Carbon Project.
The COP29 deal acknowledged that lower income countries will need some $1.3 trillion annually to pay for their energy transition and build up their resilience to future climate impacts.
Details of how to bridge the $1 trillion funding gap remain vague, but it would likely require a major effort to attract money from private investors, development banks and other sources.
Other ideas include raising money through pollution tariffs, a wealth tax or ending fossil fuel subsidies.
Friederike Roder of campaign group Global Citizen said discontent over COP29 piles pressure on countries to come up with concrete suggestions before the next climate meeting in Brazil in November 2025.
That would “help rebuild some of the trust and give confidence to countries to come forward with ambitious targets”, she told AFP.
– EU-China ‘momentum’ –
So far only a handful of countries — recent and future COP hosts Britain, the UAE and Brazil — have unveiled new climate plans.
Observers say many other nations are now unlikely to meet the February deadline, as governments grapple with shifting political and economic situations.
The new year will see a new Trump administration in the White House, with potentially sweeping implications for international trade and US climate policy.
Germany, Canada and Australia will all hold elections in which conservatives less supportive of green policies stand a chance of victory.
With the United States retreating from climate diplomacy, the relationship between China and the EU will likely become “the best source of momentum” on climate, said Li Shuo, director of the China climate hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute.
One positive takeaway from COP29, he added, was early evidence of a willingness to work together, despite the trade rivalry between Beijing and Brussels.
A lack of progress on emissions at COP29 has also caused alarm over stalling efforts on curbing warming.
But Catherine Abreu, director of the International Climate Politics Hub, said the rejection of a watered down text on the subject this year meant national climate plans should still reflect last year’s COP28 pledge to move away from planet-heating fossil fuels.
It is small consolation.
“Here we are in the hottest year on record. The impacts are enormous,” she said.
By AFP
November 28, 2024
The $300 billion a year pledged by wealthy countries for climate finance at COP29 was slammed as too little, too late - Copyright POOL/AFP Sarah Meyssonnier
Kelly MACNAMARA
A bitterly-fought climate finance deal reached at COP29 risks weakening emissions-cutting plans from developing countries, observers say, further raising the stakes for new national commitments due early next year.
The UN climate talks in Azerbaijan, which concluded last Sunday, were considered crucial to boosting climate action across huge swathes of the world after what will almost certainly be the hottest year on record.
Beginning days after the re-election of climate sceptic Donald Trump as US president, and with countries weighed down by economic concerns, the negotiations were tough-fought from the start and at one point seemed close to collapse.
Wealthy polluters ultimately agreed to find at least $300 billion a year by 2035 to help poorer nations transition to cleaner energy and prepare for increasing climate impacts such as extreme weather.
But it was slammed by developing nations as too little, too late.
Taking the floor just after the deal was approved, Nigeria’s representative Nkiruka Maduekwe dismissed the funding on offer as a “joke”, suggesting it would undermine national climate plans due early next year.
“$300 billion is unrealistic,” she said. “Let us tell ourselves the truth.”
Current climate plans, even if implemented in full, would see the world warm a devastating 2.6 degrees Celsius this century, the United Nations has said, blasting past the internationally agreed limit of 1.5C since the pre-industrial era.
A next round of national pledges is due in February and will cover the period to 2035, which scientists say is critical for curbing warming.
Mohamed Adow of Power Shift Africa, a Kenya-based think tank, said the COP29 talks produced not just a “low-ball” figure, but a delivery date of 2035 that falls at the end of the range for climate plans.
This “will certainly constrain the ability of developing countries to pledge ambitious emission cuts”, he told AFP, calling for an improved goal and other measures, like debt relief and technology support.
– ‘Our only chance’ –
Global emissions need to be reducing by more than seven percent every year “to avoid unmanageable global outcomes as the world breaches the 1.5C limit”, said Johan Rockstrom of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
“Our only chance is full focus on financing and implementing emission cuts now.”
Yet carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels — the main driver of global warming — are still rising, according to the Global Carbon Project.
The COP29 deal acknowledged that lower income countries will need some $1.3 trillion annually to pay for their energy transition and build up their resilience to future climate impacts.
Details of how to bridge the $1 trillion funding gap remain vague, but it would likely require a major effort to attract money from private investors, development banks and other sources.
Other ideas include raising money through pollution tariffs, a wealth tax or ending fossil fuel subsidies.
Friederike Roder of campaign group Global Citizen said discontent over COP29 piles pressure on countries to come up with concrete suggestions before the next climate meeting in Brazil in November 2025.
That would “help rebuild some of the trust and give confidence to countries to come forward with ambitious targets”, she told AFP.
– EU-China ‘momentum’ –
So far only a handful of countries — recent and future COP hosts Britain, the UAE and Brazil — have unveiled new climate plans.
Observers say many other nations are now unlikely to meet the February deadline, as governments grapple with shifting political and economic situations.
The new year will see a new Trump administration in the White House, with potentially sweeping implications for international trade and US climate policy.
Germany, Canada and Australia will all hold elections in which conservatives less supportive of green policies stand a chance of victory.
With the United States retreating from climate diplomacy, the relationship between China and the EU will likely become “the best source of momentum” on climate, said Li Shuo, director of the China climate hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute.
One positive takeaway from COP29, he added, was early evidence of a willingness to work together, despite the trade rivalry between Beijing and Brussels.
A lack of progress on emissions at COP29 has also caused alarm over stalling efforts on curbing warming.
But Catherine Abreu, director of the International Climate Politics Hub, said the rejection of a watered down text on the subject this year meant national climate plans should still reflect last year’s COP28 pledge to move away from planet-heating fossil fuels.
It is small consolation.
“Here we are in the hottest year on record. The impacts are enormous,” she said.
Mahir Ali
Published November 27, 2024
EVEN the low expectations that preceded the 29th Conference of Parties (COP29), which concluded in the early hours of Sunday, turned out to have been too high.
After the gavel came down in Baku on a deal proposing $300 billion in financial assistance by 2035 to developing nations struggling to decarbonise and cope in other ways with the swiftly mounting consequences of climate change, Indian representative Chandni Raina justifiably decried a “stage-managed” process that had produced “nothing more than an optical illusion”.
A week earlier, Pakistan’s former climate change minister Sherry Rehman had declared: “We’re here for life and death reasons”, demanding “internationally determined contributions” from the biggest historical contributors to global heating, and pointing out the pitfalls of leaving too much to the private sector.
Inevitably, given the timing of the conference, the malevolent spectre of Donald Trump hung over the proceedings. Even at the best of times, the US has hardly stood out as a leader in the combat against devastating climate change, with the majority of its legislators — all too many of them addicted to contributions from fossil fuel firms and lobbyists — turning pale at the prospect of a Green New Deal. But Trump and some of his closest associates are seemingly determined to pump up the volume of oil and gas extraction because all the hullabaloo about climate change is, after all, no more than a hoax.
He may well agree with Argentina’s Javier Milei, a kindred spirit from the loony right who claims to have been hailed by Trump as his “favourite president” — and who withdrew his nation’s delegation from Baku after the first three days — that the climate crisis is just a “socialist lie”.
Can humanity recover from the bungle in Baku?
What is a little more perturbing is that Azerbaijan’s leadership appears to be on more or less the same page, with President Ilham Aliyev hailing oil and gas as a “gift from God”, with no acknowledgement of the various other natural wonders that are at risk because humans insist on burning fossil fuels for energy. Besides, aren’t alternative sources of energy such as sunshine and wind equally gifts from the same source?
There’s no dearth of sunlight in Azerbaijan, but 90 per cent of its foreign income comes from fossil fuel exports — which include nearly 40pc of Israel’s oil imports, currently facilitating a genocide. The quid pro quo is weapons supplies from Israel, which may well have facilitated the ethnic cleansing of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh. It certainly might be worthwhile conducting such conferences in oil- and gas-producing nations genuinely interested in reducing their reliance on fossil fuels. But this year’s host appeared to be even less interested in investigating that path than last year’s previous petrostate venue.
COP28 in Dubai was presided over by the head of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, and swarmed with oil and gas lobbyists. The conference formally acknowledged for the first time the link between fossil fuels and climate change, something that was evident decades earlier. And it did so in the face of staunch resistance from Saudi Arabia, where the crown prince’s now diminished Vision 2030 excludes any inclination towards compensating the victims of its incredibly lucrative oil boom. By all accounts, the Saudis were again desperate to achieve the same outcome at Baku. Their ploy flopped again. But does it matter?
The previous $100bn-a-year finance deal did not add up until well after its 2020 deadline. Its tripling (or doubling, if inflation is taken into account) is likely to meet the same fate. The 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold might be breached as soon as this year, amid an increase in emissions notwithstanding previous COPs, and a near-consensus that 2024 will turn out to be the hottest year on record. Climate scientists are constantly being flabbergasted by what Harold Macmillan might have designated as “events, dear boy, events”. Who knows where the world might be in 2035, by when the $300bn level is supposed to be reached. That’s only a fraction of the notionally required resources, and it may even be too late to make much of a difference with the trillions that no one seriously expects to be doled out.
It is hardly necessary to point out that the UN’s efforts to tackle the climate emergency have been ineffective. But anyone who suggests that a failing process should be abandoned must present a viable alternative. That’s not easy, short of straying into fantasy world. It’s a small mercy that COP30 will take place in Brazil, whose present government is dedicated to thwarting climate change. Perhaps putting the remarkably astute Greta Thunberg and fellow young activists from around the world in charge of working out the way forward might be the ideal option. But I must be dreaming.
mahir.dawn@gmail.com
Published in Dawn, November 27th, 2024
EVEN the low expectations that preceded the 29th Conference of Parties (COP29), which concluded in the early hours of Sunday, turned out to have been too high.
After the gavel came down in Baku on a deal proposing $300 billion in financial assistance by 2035 to developing nations struggling to decarbonise and cope in other ways with the swiftly mounting consequences of climate change, Indian representative Chandni Raina justifiably decried a “stage-managed” process that had produced “nothing more than an optical illusion”.
A week earlier, Pakistan’s former climate change minister Sherry Rehman had declared: “We’re here for life and death reasons”, demanding “internationally determined contributions” from the biggest historical contributors to global heating, and pointing out the pitfalls of leaving too much to the private sector.
Inevitably, given the timing of the conference, the malevolent spectre of Donald Trump hung over the proceedings. Even at the best of times, the US has hardly stood out as a leader in the combat against devastating climate change, with the majority of its legislators — all too many of them addicted to contributions from fossil fuel firms and lobbyists — turning pale at the prospect of a Green New Deal. But Trump and some of his closest associates are seemingly determined to pump up the volume of oil and gas extraction because all the hullabaloo about climate change is, after all, no more than a hoax.
He may well agree with Argentina’s Javier Milei, a kindred spirit from the loony right who claims to have been hailed by Trump as his “favourite president” — and who withdrew his nation’s delegation from Baku after the first three days — that the climate crisis is just a “socialist lie”.
Can humanity recover from the bungle in Baku?
What is a little more perturbing is that Azerbaijan’s leadership appears to be on more or less the same page, with President Ilham Aliyev hailing oil and gas as a “gift from God”, with no acknowledgement of the various other natural wonders that are at risk because humans insist on burning fossil fuels for energy. Besides, aren’t alternative sources of energy such as sunshine and wind equally gifts from the same source?
There’s no dearth of sunlight in Azerbaijan, but 90 per cent of its foreign income comes from fossil fuel exports — which include nearly 40pc of Israel’s oil imports, currently facilitating a genocide. The quid pro quo is weapons supplies from Israel, which may well have facilitated the ethnic cleansing of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh. It certainly might be worthwhile conducting such conferences in oil- and gas-producing nations genuinely interested in reducing their reliance on fossil fuels. But this year’s host appeared to be even less interested in investigating that path than last year’s previous petrostate venue.
COP28 in Dubai was presided over by the head of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, and swarmed with oil and gas lobbyists. The conference formally acknowledged for the first time the link between fossil fuels and climate change, something that was evident decades earlier. And it did so in the face of staunch resistance from Saudi Arabia, where the crown prince’s now diminished Vision 2030 excludes any inclination towards compensating the victims of its incredibly lucrative oil boom. By all accounts, the Saudis were again desperate to achieve the same outcome at Baku. Their ploy flopped again. But does it matter?
The previous $100bn-a-year finance deal did not add up until well after its 2020 deadline. Its tripling (or doubling, if inflation is taken into account) is likely to meet the same fate. The 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold might be breached as soon as this year, amid an increase in emissions notwithstanding previous COPs, and a near-consensus that 2024 will turn out to be the hottest year on record. Climate scientists are constantly being flabbergasted by what Harold Macmillan might have designated as “events, dear boy, events”. Who knows where the world might be in 2035, by when the $300bn level is supposed to be reached. That’s only a fraction of the notionally required resources, and it may even be too late to make much of a difference with the trillions that no one seriously expects to be doled out.
It is hardly necessary to point out that the UN’s efforts to tackle the climate emergency have been ineffective. But anyone who suggests that a failing process should be abandoned must present a viable alternative. That’s not easy, short of straying into fantasy world. It’s a small mercy that COP30 will take place in Brazil, whose present government is dedicated to thwarting climate change. Perhaps putting the remarkably astute Greta Thunberg and fellow young activists from around the world in charge of working out the way forward might be the ideal option. But I must be dreaming.
mahir.dawn@gmail.com
Published in Dawn, November 27th, 2024
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