The UN Offers a Pathway to Be Walked by Adopting the ICJ’s Climate Opinion
It took them a while, but a few days ago the UN adopted a resolution backing the ICJ’s advisory opinion stating that countries must prevent harm to the climate system, the vote being 141 for, eight against, 28 abstentions, and 16 states that didn’t vote. The eight against were Belarus, Iran, Israel, Liberia, Russia, Saudi Arabia, the United States and Yemen. And since this list seems harder to find in articles, though the details of the vote are public, I’ll also list the abstentions, Czechia notably being the only EU state among them, and the countries that didn’t vote. So those who abstained were Algeria, Argentina, Bahrain, Brunei, Czechia, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, India, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Lesotho, Libya, Namibia, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Paraguay, Qatar, South Africa, Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Tunisia, Turkey and Zimbabwe, while those who didn’t vote were Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Benin, Bolivia, Central African Republic, Dominica, Eswatini, Kiribati, Madagascar, Nicaragua, North Korea, Serbia, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Venezuela. Kiribati being on that list despite being one of the states that’s the most vulnerable to climate change is definitely surprising, but I don’t know more details, so maybe their representative was unable to vote?
What matters now is that this creates legal backing for what was merely a non-binding advisory opinion. Not that I have much confidence that it’ll have notable actual effects, seeing as the current US administration is fighting it tooth and nail and in general the most powerful countries, which are also those most responsible for the emissions that cause climate change, tend to pretty much ignore UN resolutions that they can’t block, directly or indirectly, plus that the resolution was somewhat watered down compared to the initial form. And my complaints about the ICJ opinion, namely that it should focus more on prevention instead of penalties or even restoration after the fact and move away from this anthropocentric view and relatively narrow focus on what is understood as the climate and more towards the environment as a whole and other species, still stand. But it is nevertheless a step forward. Or, as I’ve seen it described, a “pathway [that] is less than straightforward, [but] there to be walked“.
