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UN’s Top Court Begins Hearings on Landmark Climate Case

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06 Dec, 2024

This post was originally published on Eco Watch

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) — the United Nations’ highest court — began hearings on Monday in the biggest case in its history. The hearings involve what legal obligations States have when it comes to climate change.

The proceedings represent efforts by the international community to formulate a legal framework to address the climate crisis.

“Climate change for us is not a distant threat,” Vishal Prasad, director of Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change — a group active in bringing the legal action — told journalists before the hearings, as The Guardian reported. “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.”

Representatives from small Pacific island states outside the ICJ in The Hague, Netherlands on Dec. 2, 2024. Michel Porro / Getty Images

Vanuatu was the first country to present arguments at the hearings. The South Pacific nation of small islands urged the UN court to address the harms caused by climate change and the legal obligation of “a handful of readily identifiable states” to address their contributions to global heating and its impacts.

It is expected that a record amount of oral statements will be presented to the ICJ during the hearings, which will continue until December 13 in the Hague, Netherlands, reported UN News. 

Following the hearings, the ICJ will issue an advisory opinion — expected in 2025 — to clarify the legal obligations of States under international law, as well as the consequences for breaching those duties.

ICJ’s advisory opinions are not legally binding, but experts say they clarify law and are authoritative documents that will be referred to in future climate litigation, as well as during international climate negotiations, The Guardian said in another report.

Ralph Regenvanu, special climate change and environment envoy representing Vanuatu, told the ICJ judges that the “readily identifiable states” responsible for the climate crisis had produced most of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions while being the least affected by them.

The court heard testimony on how Vanuatu and other Pacific island states bear the brunt of more frequent and severe climate disasters, including rising sea levels.

“We find ourselves on the frontlines of a crisis we did not create,” Regenvanu said, as The Guardian reported.

The hearing was the result of diplomacy led by Vanuatu and years of work by Pacific island law students.

During the hearings, 98 countries will give statements, including wealthy nations most responsible for the climate crisis such as the United States, China, Russia and the United Kingdom.

Though the decision will not be legally binding, advisory opinions have “an authoritative value and cannot be neglected,” the ICJ Registrar said in a recent UN News interview.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres said the advisory opinion will assist the UN, General Assembly and Member States to “take the bolder and stronger climate action that our world so desperately needs,” as reported by UN News.

“It could also guide the actions and conduct of States in their relations with each other, as well as towards their own citizens. This is essential,” Guterres stressed.

The post UN’s Top Court Begins Hearings on Landmark Climate Case appeared first on EcoWatch.

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An international team of scientists, led jointly by The University of Melbourne and Seoul National University, has found global water storage on land has plummeted since the start of the 21st century, overtaking glacier melt as the leading cause of sea level rise and measurably shifting the Earth’s pole of rotation.

Published in Science, the research combined global soil moisture data estimated by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecast (ECMWF) Reanalysis v5 (ERA5), global mean sea level measurements and observations of Earth’s pole movement in order to estimate changes in terrestrial (land) water storage (TWS) from 1979 to 2016.

“The study raises critical questions about the main drivers of declining water storage on land and whether global lands will continue to become drier,” University of Melbourne author Professor Dongryeol Ryu said.

“Water constantly cycles between land and oceans, but the current rate of water loss from land is outpacing its replenishment. This is potentially irreversible because it’s unlikely this trend will reverse if global temperatures and evaporative demand continue to rise at their current rates. Without substantial changes in climate patterns, the imbalance in the water cycle is likely to persist, leading to a net loss of water from land to oceans over time.”

Between 2000 and 2002, soil moisture decreased by around 1614 gigatonnes (1 Gt equals 1 km3 of water) — nearly double Greenland’s ice loss of about 900 Gt in 2002–2006. From 2003 to 2016, soil moisture depletion continued, with an additional 1009 Gt lost.

Soil moisture had not recovered as of 2021, with little likelihood of recovery under present climate conditions. The authors say this decline is corroborated by independent observations of global mean sea level rise (~4.4 mm) and Earth’s polar shift (~45 cm in 2003–2012).

Water loss was most pronounced across East and Central Asia, Central Africa, and North and South America. In Australia, the growing depletion has impacted parts of Western Australia and south-eastern Australia, including western Victoria, although the Northern Territory and Queensland saw a small replenishment of soil moisture.

Image credit: iStock.com/ZU_09

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