The International Court of Justice, the United Nations’ top court, issued an advisory opinion Wednesday that found all nations must tackle climate change and those that do not act could be obliged to pay reparations for the harm caused to the environment.
Nikki Reisch, director of climate and energy at the Center for International Environmental Law, said she was “floored” when she heard the judgment.
“This is a truly game-changing, momentous ruling that opens the door for climate justice and accountability and shuts the door on big polluters’ impunity,” she said.
The ruling was the result of years of efforts by activists and small island nations. The case was first initiated by Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change, a group of young Pacific Islanders facing the existential threat of rising sea levels, and led by the island nation of Vanuatu.
WATCH: How young Pacific Islanders helped bring climate justice to the world’s court
Their lobbying resulted in the U.N. General Assembly voting in 2023 to ask the court to take up the legal question of climate change and issue an advisory opinion, a ruling that would not be binding but would provide guidance to other courts and governments.
Watch the video in the player above.
Here are key takeaways from the ICJ’s ruling.
Climate change is a human rights issue
The ICJ was asked its opinion on two questions: What is the obligation of a country to act against climate change? And what legal consequences should a country face for contributing to climate change that results in harm to the environment?
Reading the opinion from the bench, ICJ President Yuji Iwasawa said that the U.N. had recognized that human rights and the environment were related and that several nations had passed laws based on this premise.
“The human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment is therefore inherent in the enjoyment of other human rights,” he said.
“Taking into account the adverse effects of climate change on the enjoyment of human rights, the Court considers that the full enjoyment of human rights cannot be ensured without the protection of the climate system and other parts of the environment.”
Restitution and compensation
The court found that nations responsible for emitting greenhouse gases — or who fail to take action to curb emissions — could be required to pay reparations to victims harmed by climate change.
Restitution could “take the form of reconstructing damaged or destroyed infrastructure, and restoring ecosystems and biodiversity.”
The court said that exact restitution may be “difficult or unfeasible” to achieve because environmental damage “is often not easily reversible.” In those cases, compensation “has the function of addressing losses” caused by climate change.
However, the court noted that climate change compensation “may be difficult to calculate as there is usually a degree of uncertainty with respect to the exact extent of the damage caused.”
Implementation is key
Maria Antonia Tigre, director of global climate change litigation at Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, said she was “positively surprised” by the opinion.
“It’s much better than I expected it to be,” she said. “Because the ICJ is traditional. It’s understood to be a traditional court. So there [were] a lot of people who were very cautious about what the court was actually going to recognize.”
She said that while many courts had recognized the right to a healthy environment, the ICJ doing so was “extremely groundbreaking.”
But even as experts welcomed the ruling, others were still skeptical of the ICJ’s ability to implement climate justice.
“It’s very much about implementation. So what’s going to happen next?” asked University of Bristol law professor Folúkẹ́ Adébísí.
“It’s an advisory opinion, and in a sense the advisory opinions can be persuasive to certain nations, but only when nations want to abide by the things that have been said by the ICJ,” she said.
Adébísí argued that the ICJ was founded on an international legal structure that was already unequal.
“It’s built upon an international legal system that develops through the dispossession and the exploitation of Indigenous racialized and colonized peoples,” she said. “The very nature of international law has produced a structure that doesn’t really or hasn’t returned humanity to the people it has dispossessed and even with its best intentions.”
Arguments against the opinion
The United States was one of more than 100 participants at the hearing and was represented by State Department legal adviser Margaret Taylor. It was one of several countries, mostly made up of major fossil fuel producers and consumers, that argued against an expansive opinion that would find climate change was violating international human rights.
At the hearing in December, Taylor acknowledged to the court that climate change represented one of the world’s “gravest challenges” and agreed that “urgent action” was required. But the U.S. said that treaties such as the 2015 Paris agreement should be “the primary framework” to guide the court’s decision rather than broader human rights law.
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The U.S. also argued that individual nations, not courts, should determine what should be just compensation for the negative effects of climate change. Taylor also argued that countries that were contributors to global warming should only be held responsible for the greenhouse gases they emitted after climate change was understood to be a problem.
Taylor said there was no existing international human right to a healthy environment and finding fault with nations most responsible for greenhouse gases would require showing direct casualty between the offender and any harm done.
The court rejected many of these arguments.
Reactions around the world
The ruling was welcomed by climate activists around the world. Tigre and Reisch said they expect it to have a profound impact in other court cases, government policies and future climate negotiations.
Tigre said her organization had tracked more than 90,000 climate lawsuits around the world. She believes at least some of them will be influenced by the ICJ ruling.
“I think in several jurisdictions, in future litigation cases, they will follow this interpretation of the ICJ,” Tigre said. “This also has some weight in political negotiations. I think even in voluntary measures we’ve seen that climate litigation sometimes creates all of these indirect effects even before a decision [is] reached.”
Reisch had said that the hearing demonstrated a global desire for stronger action. But she said the ICJ ruling was a direct message to countries like the United States who were more responsible for greenhouse gas emissions.
“It’s tantamount to a cease-and-desist notice to fossil fuel producers and really a sign to the biggest polluters that they cannot persist with business as usual,” Reisch said.
“It does make the world a less hospitable place for the countries that persist in conduct that so clearly violates the law,” she added.
But Adébísí said the ICJ did not specify which nations must pay reparations nor does it have the power to do so while asking smaller countries, like the Pacific Island nations that pushed for the ruling, to bring cases that will face opposition.
“Which states, which have the economic, military and political might, will agree to pay [reparations]?” she said. “This is an advisory judgment that doesn’t mandate particular states to do anything, and it relies on states which don’t have the power to bring a claim within a system which hasn’t been their friend.”
What’s next for the U.S.
Courts in the U.S. do not usually cite international court cases and the country dropped compulsory jurisdiction with the ICJ in 1986. The ICJ’s advisory opinion is not likely to have a direct effect on U.S. court rulings.
“Traditionally U.S. courts haven’t really followed ICJ decisions very much, so I don’t think it will make a significant difference,” Tigre said.
However, there may be more influence outside of the courts among policymakers and activists.
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Reisch noted that some states have begun to implement their own climate policies, and the ICJ opinion may influence that legislation.
“This judgment could embolden the many state and local governments in the U.S. that are taking the lead on climate action as the federal government shirks its duties,” Reisch said.
She said that the effect of inspiring activists could also be significant: “The fact that this effort, spearheaded by students from the Pacific and a global youth movement, and taken up by states, succeeded in achieving such a momentous victory for global climate justice and accountability will inspire climate activists around the world, including here in the U.S.”
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