Existential and urgent': what impact will ICJ climate ruling have on Cop30?

"In July 2025, the international court of justice delivered a landmark decision that clarified that all states were bound under international law to tackle the human-made climate crisis, which the judges unanimously concluded posed an urgent and existential threat to the planet's life-sustaining systems and therefore humanity itself. The ICJ advisory opinion built on rulings from hundreds of climate lawsuits across the world over the past decade or more,"

"But the ICJ case in particular, which brought the world's biggest problem to the world's highest court, has been hailed as a gamechanger for climate justice and accountability. It made clear that the established legal duty to do no harm, particularly transboundary environmental harm, was universal and not contingent on a country's ratification or membership of formal treaties such as the Paris agreement, from which Donald Trump withdrew on his first day back in the White House."

"The credibility of the climate COP30 as a whole depends on achieving a meaningful outcome on mitigation and international financial and technological cooperation, with specific reference to fossil fuels and related subsidies as the main drivers of climate change and their impacts on human rights, including health, economic equality, adequate standard of living, education, and cultural rights. So what impact could or should the ICJ opinion have on the negotiations and domestic climate policies?"

In July 2025 the international court of justice concluded that all states are bound under international law to tackle the human-made climate crisis, finding it an urgent, existential threat to the planet's life-sustaining systems and humanity. The advisory opinion built on hundreds of climate lawsuits and reinforced recent rulings from the inter-American court of human rights and the international tribunal on the law of the sea. The opinion affirmed a universal duty to prevent transboundary environmental harm irrespective of treaty ratification. On the opening day of Cop30, UN experts call for full compliance, a fossil fuel lobby ban, transparency, and stronger mitigation, finance, and technology cooperation.

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