Joie Chowdhury is a senior attorney for the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL)’s Climate & Energy Program. Lien Vandamme is a senior campaigner for CIEL’s Climate & Energy Program.
While major polluters at this year’s UN climate talks, COP29, brazenly failed to deliver the finance needed to remedy climate harm in yet another attempt to escape their obligations under international law, a key moment for climate justice is coming up. The historic hearings on climate change at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), scheduled for December 2-13, may help advance the case for climate reparations.
The hearings will inform the Court’s advisory opinion on the international legal obligations of states in relation to the climate crisis. The Court’s pronouncements can produce tangible impacts. While advisory opinions do not settle specific conflicts between states, they are definitive interpretations of binding law – and even considered instruments of preventive diplomacy.
One of the most contested issues at the heart of the ICJ climate advisory proceedings is the legal consequences that states face when they breach their climate-related obligations, and harm ensues. Those consequences may involve stopping harmful activities that damage the climate, ensuring they are not repeated, and providing full reparation, including restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, and satisfaction measures.
Specific measures are needed to remedy the wide range of harms caused by the climate crisis, both economic and non-economic. Measures beyond compensation could include phasing out fossil fuels or debt cancellation.
Loss and damage underfunded
In the face of rich countries’ avoidance and denial of their responsibility for having contributed the most cumulatively to the escalating climate crisis, clarity from the ICJ on states’ legal accountability is more urgent than ever. It took three long decades for states to agree on a fund to address climate harms, also known as loss and damage, under the UN climate negotiations.
Even now that the fund is in place, it remains woefully underfunded compared to the immense and rising need. Also, it is predicated on voluntary finance rather than obligatory contributions from states with a legal duty to pay for climate harm.
As the UN Secretary-General has emphasised, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) loss and damage mechanisms are not currently structured to fulfill states’ obligations to provide effective remedies for climate-related harms.
EXPLAINER: What was decided at the COP29 climate summit in Baku?
And the UNFCCC process once again failed to address this massive funding gap: the latest summit, COP29, announced a new climate finance goal that is far too low and far too late, committing only to mobilise funds by 2035, without any guarantees the funding will be provided and grants-based – and without a designated sum for loss and damage.
This inaction reflects a pattern of powerful polluting countries evading their legal obligations and prioritising their own economic interests over the human rights of communities already bearing the brunt of the climate crisis.
Obligation, not charity
The ICJ now has a unique opportunity to affirm that accountability and reparations for climate damage are a matter of obligation and justice — not charity. Its opinion could shape global climate law and policy, empowering climate-vulnerable nations with legal tools to strengthen their positions in climate talks.
This could pave the way for holding polluters more accountable, particularly in areas like loss and damage and climate finance, inside the negotiation rooms and beyond. More practically, if the loss and damage fund continues to under-deliver, states and communities may well seek redress outside the UNFCCC and draw guidance from the forthcoming ICJ advisory opinion.
In its ongoing climate advisory proceedings, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) is also considering a range of issues including state duties to guarantee the right to redress for climate harm. The IACtHR has a rich jurisprudence on remedy and reparation, including in the environmental context, such as in the La Oroya case. The IACtHR climate advisory opinion is expected in early 2025, before the ICJ advisory opinion, and could set the legal bar high for climate reparations.
People whose rights are harmed by climate impacts deserve remedy and reparation. The right to remedy and reparations is a long-standing fundamental tenet of international law, rooted in multiple frameworks such as the law of state responsibility and human rights law, and deeply anchored in ICJ jurisprudence. The legal frameworks to hold states accountable already exist. What is required now is their robust application in the context of climate change.
Legal first step
Without concrete remedy, climate justice and equitable multilateralism will remain hollow. International cooperation is crucial, yet it must be paired with tangible policies that explicitly address harm and hold those responsible to account. The time has come to halt the cycle of continuing harm and refusal to repair.
Most climate-vulnerable states and peoples have long emphasised the vital importance of redress for climate harm. The ICJ hearings will put all cards on the table. The world’s major polluters and the most climate-vulnerable nations will have their day in court. Civil society will closely monitor how states’ interventions in the courtroom align with claims of climate and human rights leadership.
All eyes now turn to the ICJ, but let’s be clear: the fight for climate accountability extends beyond the Court’s chambers. Legal clarity will serve as a first step, but law alone is not a solution for addressing climate harm, as the issue is deeply rooted in structural injustice.
Our biggest hope lies in the upsurge of people coming together across generations, campaigns and negotiations, in the courts and the streets, demanding justice in defence of people and the planet.
The post Call for climate reparations at the ICJ even more urgent after COP29 falls short appeared first on Climate Home News.
Call for climate reparations at the ICJ even more urgent after COP29 falls short
China’s rapidly-expanding clean energy generation and deepening electrification has made the country more resilient to energy shocks, bolstering its position ahead of the COP31 climate talks in Türkiye, where speeding up the world’s electrification is set to dominate.
The growth of China’s renewable energy capacity protected it from the economic fallout from the energy crisis triggered by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, according to analysis by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) published on Thursday.
As oil and gas stopped flowing through the key fossil fuel trade route, leading prices to soar, China’s crude oil imports – the largest in the world – fell sharply, leading the country to start drawing down on its reserves and curbing its exports of petroleum products.
“Yet, the import reduction did not produce the economic and social disruption in China one might normally expect from a shock of this scale,” the report found.
As temporary adjustment cushioned the oil-import shock, clean power and the electrification of the transport sector buffered the economic costs.
The rise of renewable energy and nuclear power have reduced China’s fossil fuel imports bill by more than $9 billion since 2020, more than any other country, according to CREA.
“China remains exposed to imported fuels, particularly where oil is used as a chemical feedstock, but reducing fossil-fuel demand already contributes to energy security,” said Qi Qin, the report’s author.
The view from Beijing: vindicated
CREA’s analysis found the roll-out of electric vehicles (EVs) displaced 38 million tonnes of oil equivalent between March and August, equivalent to around 13% of China’s crude oil imports in the same period the previous year.
China’s ongoing reliance on coal-fired power plants also protected the country against oil and gas supply disruptions, although coal power generation remained broadly flat in the six months since the start of the Iran war, according to the report.
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Canada, EU agree deeper cooperation on energy and cleantech supply chains
Both sides have pledged to strengthen investment and trade cooperation to make cleantech supply chains more resilient to shocks -
Africa launches long-delayed energy bank to finance fossil fuel projects
The Africa Energy Bank’s main aim is financing oil and gas projects, underscoring support among many African governments for continued fossil fuel development
Li Shuo, director of China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute, told Climate home News that China’s all-of-the-above approach to energy development has provided the country with the strategic flexibility to face the oil shock.
“While China has often been criticised in previous years for moving too slowly away from coal, this year’s global energy market volatility has given Chinese policymakers a renewed sense of confidence. There is a growing sentiment in Beijing that recent events have vindicated China’s energy strategy as both prudent and pragmatic,” he said.
Can China support the electrification pledge?
Despite its vast cleantech build-out and rapid electrification boosting its energy resilience, China has stopped short of endorsing an initiative by COP31 host Türkiye to increase the global share of electricity to 35% in final energy use by 2035.
Li Gao, vice minister at the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, who will lead the Chinese delegation at COP31, told a press conference the electrification target was in line with Chinese policy. “We believe that increasing electrification levels will help promote a green and low-carbon energy transition and address climate change,” he said.
China’s position on the electrification initiative is one of the major questions hanging over the COP31 talks beginning in Antalya next week.
“What is clear is that China has the most to gain from accelerated electrification because of their manufacturing capabilities,” said Bruce Douglas, CEO of the Global Renewables Alliance.
In 2026 alone, China’s exports of solar panels, batteries, EV and other cleantech are on track to avoid emissions equivalent to Brazil’s annual emissions.
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China’s industrial engine starts to break its fossil fuel habit
Despite a rebound in coal generation this year, clean energy from wind and solar is gaining ground on the fossil fuels that have powered decades of industry growth -
COP31 electrification pledge leaves out clean power commitment
Campaigners and experts say the goal’s effectiveness in reducing emissions may be limited unless countries agree to meet it using only clean energy
Türkiye’s proposal doesn’t include a commitment to produce the power from clean energy, nor does it explicitly link electrification to the transition away from fossil fuels – issues on which the EU has signalled it is ready to push back.
But Chinese analysts say Beijing is unlikely to support linking a global electrification goal to commitments on phasing out fossil fuels.
Former French climate envoy Laurence Tubiana, the outgoing CEO of the European Climate Foundation, told Climate Home News that the EU and developed countries such as Brazil – which is influential within the BRICS group of large emerging economies – have a responsibility to push China to show leadership in the talks.
Driving the world’s electrification
The electrification of the Chinese economy has outpaced that of any other major economy.
In the US and the EU, the share of electrification has stagnated just above 20%. In China, it has doubled since 2005, reaching close to 30% in 2025.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) expects China will remain the single largest driver of global electricity demand growth through to 2030, as it electrifies its manufacturing sector as well as growing demand for cooling and EV charging.
Over the next five years, the IEA forecasts that China will increase its electricity consumption by as much as the total electricity consumption of the EU today.
In August, the Chinese government set a target to boost the share of electricity in its final energy consumption to 35% by 2030 – five years ahead of Türkiye’s proposed goal.
From laggard to frontrunner
Clean-power growth and electrification could meet all of China’s rising power demand, according to CREA. By 2030, this would mean renewable and nuclear energy could reach 54% of power generation – exceeding China’s target to generate half its electricity from non-fossil sources by the end of the decade.
Clean electricity already met all of China’s demand growth in 2025. “The challenge lies in sustaining such growth over several years,” said Qin.
From Beijing’s perspective, the global targets such as the electrification pledge “no longer appear particularly ambitious or threatening”, said Li, of the Asia Society Policy Institute.
“China, long perceived as a climate laggard, is increasingly moving ahead of countries in the Global North. A global ceiling target is increasingly only a floor for China,” he emphasised.
The post Clean power shields China from oil shock more than any other country appeared first on Climate Home News.
Clean power shields China from oil shock more than any other country
On 3 November, the Brazilian presidency of the COP30 climate talks released its long-awaited “roadmap” on ending deforestation.
Ahead of the Belém summit, Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva made a call for a “roadmap” to halt and reverse deforestation.
Although this voluntary roadmap was outside the COP’s official agenda, it snowballed into a rallying point at the “Amazon” COP.
By the end of the summit, 93 countries had signed on to the deforestation roadmap, committing to develop voluntary pathways to reverse forest loss and degradation by 2030.
The Brazilian presidency called on countries to describe what a pathway away from deforestation could look like, what challenges and support they needed.
This call was answered by 18 countries and four negotiating blocs that offered their inputs on the roadmap, along with scores of NGOs, research centres and other groups.
Now that the roadmap has been published, Carbon Brief explains where it came from, what it entails, why some did not sign on – and what’s next.
What is a deforestation ‘roadmap’?
The “deforestation roadmap” was one of the signature announcements of the Brazilian presidency of th