Leaders of small island states threatened by climate change turned to the United Nations maritime court on Monday to demand stronger measures to protect the oceans.
The hearing, which will last two weeks, must determine whether the greenhouse gases are “marine pollution” within the meaning of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Sea, protected by this court based in Hamburg in Germany.
Such a classification would legally require the 157 states that have ratified this treaty to take more legislative measures against global warming.
-“Empty promises”-
Several representatives of the applicant nations (Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Niue, Palau, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Tuvalu and Vanuatu) took turns in the morning, before the twenty-two judges in blue robes.
“The time has come to speak in terms of legally binding obligations rather than empty broken promises,” said Gaston Alfonso Browne, the Prime Minister of the Caribbean archipelago of Antigua and Barbuda.
In the circular room of the court, the speakers showed images of the damage already caused by climate change on their islands, threatened by rising waters and the multiplication of extreme weather events.
“We have been patient, but we now feel that our good faith has been abused,” added Arnold Loughman, attorney general of Vanuatu, a small island in Oceania particularly vulnerable to rising waters.
Succeeding the official representatives, Naima Te Maila Fifita, a climate activist from Tuvalu, shell necklace and red flower in her hair, told the story of her grandfather realizing “with great sadness, that the island on which he played as a child had disappeared.
The UN Convention requires signatory states to “take measures to prevent, reduce and control pollution of the marine environment, as well as to protect and preserve this environment”.
“Marine pollution” is defined as any “introduction by man, directly or indirectly, of substances or energy into the marine environment (…) which causes or is likely to cause deleterious effects”, according to this text. .
A description which applies to the current situation, according to the applicants who launched the procedure at the end of 2022.
“Entire marine and coastal ecosystems are currently dying due to warming and acidification of waters,” Kausea Natano, the Prime Minister of Tuvalu, an Oceanian archipelago that could disappear by the end of the century, told the court. under water according to some scientists.
“If international law has nothing to say about entire countries disappearing underwater (…), then what is the point?” he added.
If greenhouse gases were considered “marine pollution”, the way in which the national courts of signatory states interpret the Convention would be changed, forcing governments to act.
“We are discussing measures that (states) must take by virtue of the law, and not of political goodwill,” commented Catherine Amirfar, legal adviser to the collective, during a press conference on Monday.
“This is a path that complements the action we are taking in the COPs, to ensure that States respect their commitments,” Mr. Browne explains to AFP. However, some powers, such as the United States or Turkey, are not party to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Sea
“Just a few years is all we have before the ocean consumes everything my people have built over the centuries,” Natano said.
The seas are bearing the brunt of climate change. Nearly 60% of the world’s ocean surface experienced at least one marine heat event in 2022, according to a report from US authorities.
This is the “highest level in modern atmospheric records and in paleoclimatic archives going back 800,000 years,” he notes.
In recent years, legal actions against government climate inaction have increased, sometimes succeeding in constraining political decisions.
In March, the UN General Assembly made a request to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to clarify states’ “obligations” on climate change, following a request from Vanuatu.
11/09/2023 16:14:48 – Hamburg (AFP) © 2023 AFP