Testimony from the United States during the ongoing International Court of Justice (ICJ) hearing on Wednesday evoked anger from climate activists and vulnerable nations, as the planet’s second-largest greenhouse gas emitter argued against nations being legally obligated to take measures to fight the climate crisis.

The oral arguments were part of the historic climate hearing in The Hague, where climate-vulnerable countries like Vanuatu and other small island nations are calling for rich polluters that are most responsible for global heating to be held accountable.

“The International Court of Justice’s proceedings are a profound moment in global climate accountability. The hearings elevate science to the forefront, ensuring international law reflects the realities of climate impacts and the urgent need for global action,” said Dr. Delta Merner, lead scientist for the Union of Concerned Scientists’ (UCS) Science Hub for Climate Litigation, in a press release from UCS. “Yet in today’s oral arguments, the United States — the world’s largest historical polluter of heat trapping emissions — resisted calls for climate accountability. Instead of taking responsibility for its contributions to the climate crisis, the United States used its 30-minute slot to downplay the role of the courts for global climate action, emphasize non-binding national commitments under the Paris Agreement, and reject the notion of historical responsibility.”

“By framing climate change as a collective action challenge without clear legal obligations for individual states, the United States dismissed the potential for redress or binding accountability measures that advance justice for climate-vulnerable nations,” Merner added.

In its arguments, the U.S. emphasized sticking with the 2015 and Paris Agreement and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, as well as other treaties, reported The Guardian.

“Any other legal obligations relating to climate change mitigation identified by the court should be interpreted consistently with the obligations states have under this treaty regime,” Margaret Taylor, legal adviser for the U.S. Department of State, told the ICJ judges, as The Guardian reported.

The response from climate activists illustrated the need for wealthy nations to be held accountable for their disproportionate contributions to the climate crisis, as well as their outsized evasion of responsibility.

“Once again, we witness a disheartening attempt by the U.S. to evade its responsibilities as one of the world’s largest polluters,” said Vishal Prasad, campaign director for the Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change, as reported by The Guardian. “The U.S. is content with its business-as-usual approach and has taken every possible measure to shirk its historical responsibility, disregard human rights and reject climate justice.”

Other of the world’s largest fossil fuel economies and biggest greenhouse gas emitters — China, Australia and Saudi Arabia — also argued against being held legally accountable for the pollution they produce.

“It is absurd for the Biden administration to argue before the ICJ that countries do not have clear legal obligations to reduce carbon pollution, especially as it prepares to turn over the executive office to a proven climate denier like president-elect Trump, whose policies are likely to deeply harm U.S. climate action,” said Ashfaq Khalfan, climate justice director at Oxfam.

Vulnerable nations fought for years for rich polluters to be held accountable, and the UN responded by asking the ICJ to give an advisory opinion on the obligations of states in combating climate change, along with what the legal consequences would be if they do not do their part.

“The ICJ’s advisory opinion has the potential to reshape international climate governance by providing clear, authoritative guidance on nation’s obligations under existing law. This process showcases how the best available science can illuminate pathways to protect human rights, advance equity, and compel ambitious climate action,” Merner said in the press release. “In the face of stonewalling from major polluters, we applaud the leadership of Vanuatu and others for advancing this process. These proceedings must continue to center the voices of frontline communities.”

More than 100 countries and organizations are providing testimony over the 12-day hearings.

Advisory opinions by the ICJ are not binding, but nonetheless carry significant weight both legally and politically. The opinion of the court will be cited as an authoritative statement during future international climate negotiations and litigation.

Ralph Regenvanu, special climate change envoy for Vanuatu, on Wednesday expressed disappointment in the U.S. and other major polluters on behalf of his country.

“These nations, some of the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitters, have pointed to existing treaties and commitments that have regrettably failed to motivate substantial reductions in emissions… these treaties are essential, but they cannot be a veil for inaction or a substitute for legal accountability,” Regenvanu said, as The Guardian reported.

Vanuatu is leading the push for financial support and compensation for loss and damage for the countries that are most vulnerable to climate impacts — especially Pacific island nations — such as sea-level rise, flooding, drought and wildfires.

Taylor was dismissive of the ICJ weighing in on historic emitters being held responsible for their past pollution.

“An advisory proceeding is not the means to litigate whether individual states or groups of states have violated obligations pertaining to climate change in the past or bear responsibility for reparations… nor would it be appropriate to do so,” Taylor said, as reported by The Guardian.

There are three international courts of law responsible for providing advisory opinions concerning the climate crisis, including the ICJ, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS).

Earlier this year, ITLOS found that nations have a legal obligation to control greenhouse gases as pollutants.

“By leveraging science and law together, the ICJ can help course-correct the international response to climate change, providing justice and hope for future generations as they endeavor to stave off some of the worst climate harms. No matter what the court decides, civil society must continue to push for decision-making guided by science and climate-vulnerable communities, as well as challenge the outsized political power wielded by fossil fuel interests seeking to obstruct and delay climate goals for the sake of their own bottom lines,” Merner said in the press release.

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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.”

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.

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Following the recent United Nations biodiversity and climate conferences, the 16th Conference of the Parties (COP16) of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) began Monday in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, with the goal of tackling drought, desertification and land degradation.

The UN has found that, in order to restore the planet’s degraded lands and prevent desertification, an investment of at least $2.6 trillion will be needed by 2030.

“We depend on our land for survival. Yet, we treat it like dirt,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres in a press release from UNCCD.

The 12-day summit seeks to respond to drought in the face of climate change while protecting and restoring the world’s lands. The most recent previous UNCCD meeting — in 2022 in the Ivory Coast — yielded a promise for “accelerating the restoration of one billion hectares of degraded land by 2030,” reported AFP.

“Even if the global geopolitical context overshadows these crucial meetings, this kind of astral conjunction may perhaps lead to concrete decisions,” said Mauro Centritto, a sustainable plant protection expert with Italy’s National Research Council who is representing civil society organizations from Western Europe in Riyadh, as Le Monde reported.

According to Centritto, it is time to “build synergies” to connect the three COP conferences, as global heating is likely to pass the threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels established in the 2015 Paris Agreement.

“If we don’t fight together against increasing droughts and advancing land degradation, we will never achieve the goals we have set ourselves to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect flora and fauna,” Centritto added.

At the COP16 gathering of 196 nations and the European Union, UNCCD said 1.5 billion hectares must now be restored by 2030 to combat escalating droughts and other crises, reported AFP.

One day prior to the COP16 conference in Saudi Arabia — a desert nation — a new UNCCD scientific report warned that degraded soils and forest loss were lowering resilience to biodiversity loss and climate change.

“If we fail to acknowledge the pivotal role of land and take appropriate action, the consequences will ripple through every aspect of life and extend well into the future,” Ibrahim Thiaw, UNCCD executive secretary, said in a press release from the World Meteorological Organization.

The degradation of Earth’s lands disrupts ecosystems while making the land less agriculturally productive, which leads to food shortages and migration.

Land is considered to be degraded when human activities such as deforestation or pollution harm its productivity. When degradation becomes extreme it leads to desertification.

“We are a desert country. We are exposed to the harshest mode of land degradation, which is desertification,” Osama Faqeeha, Saudi Arabia’s deputy environment minister, told AFP.

Saudi Arabia has a target of restoring 40 million hectares, including “several million hectares of land” by the end of the decade, Faqeeha said.

The country has recovered 240,000 hectares of land with methods like prohibiting illegal logging and the expansion of total national parks from less than 20 in 2016 to over 500, according to Faqeeha.

Lands can also be restored through crop rotation, tree planting, the restoration of wetlands and grazing management.

“We found ourselves caught in a vicious cycle that we must break,” Thiaw told the UNCCD conference, as AFP reported. “We can only achieve this if we move beyond the silos that hinder our collective action and if we adopt a holistic approach that recognizes the constant interaction between desertification, biodiversity loss, and the acceleration of climate change.”

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Efforts by nations to come to an agreement on a global plastics treaty failed on Monday. While more than 100 countries sought to put a limit on the world’s plastics production — in addition to tackling recycling and cleanup — oil and gas companies were only prepared to address the problem of plastic waste.

The meeting in Busan, South Korea was supposed to be the last, but negotiations will continue into 2025, reported The Associated Press.

“It is clear that there is still persisting divergence,” said Inger Andersen, the United Nations Environment Programme’s executive director, as Reuters reported.

The fifth meeting of the UN Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-5) ended with countries still far from establishing the fundamental scope of a global plastics treaty.

Putting a cap on plastic production, the management of “chemicals of concern” used in the plastics making process and plastic products, as well as financing for developing countries in implementing the treaty were the most divisive issues during negotiations.

Panama proposed a path to a worldwide plastic production reduction target, which was supported by more than 100 nations, while an entirely different proposal had no provisions for a cap on production.

According to a Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) analysis, more than 200 representatives of the chemical and fossil fuel industry attended the talks — the largest group of delegates at the meeting, reported The Guardian.

Sixteen plastics industry lobbyists were present in the delegations from China, Iran, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Egypt, Finland and the Dominican Republic.

A draft revised document released Sunday by Luis Vayas Valdivieso, chair of the meeting, could be the foundation for a treaty, but still included multiple options on the most contentious issues, reported Reuters.

“A treaty that… only relies on voluntary measures would not be acceptable,” said Juliet Kabera, Rwandan Environment Management Authority director general. “It is time we take it seriously and negotiate a treaty that is fit for purpose and not built to fail.”

Saudi Arabia and other oil-producing nations expressed strong opposition to the reduction of plastics production and attempted to delay negotiations with procedural tactics.

“There was never any consensus,” said Al Gwaiz, delegate from Saudi Arabia. “There are a couple of articles that somehow seem to make it (into the document) despite our continued insistence that they are not within the scope.”

According to dataset manager Eunomia, the United States, China, India, Saudi Arabia and South Korea were 2023’s five biggest producers of polymers.

If a treaty could have been established at INC-5, it would have been among the most important environmental protection deals since the Paris Agreement.

During the talks, the U.S., which had expressed support for voluntary production reductions, was accused of not using its sway to press for legally binding actions.

“Despite maintaining in the lead-up to and during the INC that production and chemicals were important measures for the treaty, they refused to… answer the call to join more than 100 countries calling for legally binding measures,” said Rachel Radvany, campaigner for environmental law group CIEL, as reported by The Guardian.

A 2023 report from the UN Environment Programme found more than 3,200 plastic chemicals of concern, which are especially toxic for women and children, Reuters reported.

Plastic production worldwide is on course to triple by mid-century. 

Several negotiators participating in the talks expressed an urgent desire to resume the talks.

“Every day of delay is a day against humanity. Postponing negotiations does not postpone the crisis,” said Juan Carlos Monterrey Gomez, head of Panama’s delegation, as reported by Reuters. “When we reconvene, the stakes will be higher.”

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Nearly half of climate experts — 44 percent — believe China’s carbon dioxide emissions may have already peaked, or will peak in 2025 at the latest, according to a new report from think tank Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA).

China’s carbon emissions are also on track to increase slightly this year, despite fast progress on electric vehicles (EVs) and renewables.

The third edition of the annual report, China’s Climate Transition: Outlook 2024, indicated increasing optimism about China’s green transition, reported The Guardian.

“Clean energy industries have emerged as key drivers of economic growth. As China continues its transition, the benefits are becoming increasingly clear,” said Shi Xunpeng, one of the authors of the report and the president of the International Society for Energy Transition Studies, as The Guardian reported.

The 44 experts from industry and academia surveyed for this year’s report were much more optimistic about China’s carbon emissions peaking by next year than they were during last year’s survey, when just 21 percent had the same opinion.

In the report, CREA reassessed China’s progress toward its climate and emissions commitments aligned with the goals of the Paris Agreement, a press release from CREA said.

In response to the question of whether they believed coal consumption in China had peaked, 36 percent of the experts surveyed said yes, compared with 15 percent in 2023. Fifty-two percent of the experts expect the country’s consumption of coal to peak by next year, with just 20 percent saying the peak will occur later.

Coal currently makes up 80 percent of fossil fuel emissions in China, reported The Guardian.

China has set a target of reaching peak carbon emissions by the end of the decade and overall carbon neutrality by 2060. A pledge from Beijing to “strictly control” coal use in the country’s 14th “five-year plan” covers the period up until the end of next year.

“China already plans to reduce its coal consumption after 2026 but this cut will definitely have to be pretty drastic and fast if China wants to achieve the 2060 carbon neutrality goal,” said Wang Xiaojun, founder of Manila-based NGO People of Asia for Climate Solutions, as The Guardian reported.

Over the last two years, China has been focusing on renewables industries to rebuild its post-pandemic economy by developing EVs, batteries and solar panels, which have attracted high levels of investment.

The analysts included in the study also looked at whether China can lower its economy’s carbon intensity — or how much carbon dioxide is released in the production of one unit of electricity.

“In order to align with the Paris agreement… China will need to either speed up renewable energy deployment even further or guide economic development in a less energy-intensive direction,” said lead analyst at CREA Lauri Myllyvirta, as reported by The Guardian.

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