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
A first set of biodiversity plans filed by countries to reverse nature loss are “insufficient” to meet this decade’s global targets, including a landmark goal to protect at least 30% of the world’s land and marine ecosystems by 2030, a landmark UN report warned on Thursday.
The State of Biodiversity Action, put together by a panel of technical experts for the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), was released in Yerevan, ahead of the COP17 nature talks starting on Monday in the Armenian capital.
Over the next two weeks, governments will for the first time take stock of progress towards the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) agreed in 2022 – a set of 23 targets also known as the “Paris Agreement for nature” – and will decide on policy guidelines for ramping up ambition before the 2030 deadline. The UN report will be the main basis for these negotiations.
At a press conference in Armenia, UN Secretary-General António Guterres highlighted that, while there has been some progress on the GBF, the “bad news” is that less than half of country plans are on track to meet its targets.
If current commitments are met by the end of the decade, only 26% of land ecosystems and 12% of marine ecosystems will be protected – falling “real short” of the 30% target agreed in Montreal in 2022, Guterres said. “The war on nature has not yet ended,” he added.
UN Environment chief Inger Andersen said the report “sets the tone for the focus, ambition and urgent action we need to deliver” in Armenia, including by reducing subsidies that harm nature and mobilising new finance for biodiversity. “All leaders and all negotiators must respond to these findings,” she emphasised.
Andersen added that climate change amplifies threats to biodiversity, which makes protection all the more important as global warming is now almost certain to rise above a key threshold. “Exceedence of 1.5C increases the likelihood of forest diebacks, phenological shifts, warming oceans that become more inhospitable to species, irreversible tipping points and so much more,” she said.
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Progress on land but ocean lags behind
The report shows that if countries meet all the biodiversity targets in their plans, this would protect about 27% of the world’s land and sea by 2030, a fivefold increase in the span of ten years.
Progress has been uneven, with most conservation efforts focused on terrestrial ecosystems. The report suggests that currently about 19% of land ecosystems are protected, up two percentage points from 2020, which UN authorities welcomed but said is not a fast enough pace.
However, the real gap is at sea, where only about 10% of the global ocean has some sort of protection. Coastal areas under national jurisdiction have done better, as currently 23% of this marine territory is protected, but the report shows most of the deep ocean is not.
Brian O’Donnell, director of Campaign for Nature, an advocacy group, said the new High Seas Treaty – which entered into force this year and will allow for the creation of Marine Protected Areas in the deep ocean – represents an opportunity, as only about 1.5% is under protection so far.
A group of environmental NGOs including WWF and Bloomberg Philanthropies has issued a call for governments to scale up ocean conservation and to designate $16 billion annually for marine protection measures, up from $1.8bn now.
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Some countries did not set a conservation target at all for both land and sea, the report says, blaming technical challenges like how to account for overlapping protected areas, difficulty recognising protections for private land and land-accounting methodologies changing over time.
A separate report by Campaign for Nature suggests that the 30×30 goal could still be met with “increased ambition and commitment”, and says that around 50 countries have already protected about 30% of their land.
A group of environmental NGOs has warned that, beyond the 30% headline figure, protected areas need to be “high integrity” and recognise the stewardship of local communities and Indigenous peoples.
Developing countries call for finance
Rich countries will arrive at COP17 with shrinking aid budgets and geopolitical preoccupations – yet they will likely hear the same plea they’ve heard for the past few years: stepping up commitments will require finance.
A submission by African countries in August said the “implementation gap” has at its core a shortfall in the provision of funds, and that bridging it will require predictable and accessible finance.
Pacific island nations launched a similar call, arguing there is “a treaty obligation” that developing countries, including themselves, will effectively implement commitments depending on the finance and technology made available by developed nations.
To close this gap, the EU made a proposal at preliminary talks in Nairobi in August to expand the base of donors so that richer developing countries could voluntarily assume donor responsibilities. Saudi Arabia and Qatar rejected the idea, while China said this should not weaken the responsibility of developed nations.
Pre-COP draws attention to Pacific’s climate plight and 1.5C goal
So far, wealthy governments have missed a target to provide $20bn per year in international public finance for nature protection by 2025, reaching only about $16bn per year from 2023 to 2025, according to an OECD report. By 2030, the GBF aims for developed countries to directly transfer $30bn per year, and mobilise $200bn from all sources.
The UN report released on Thursday shows even slower progress in redirecting harmful subsidies such as those which encourage the overuse of fertilisers and the production and consumption of new fossil fuels, and below-market fees that encourage overfishing. UN Environment estimates that for every dollar spent protecting nature, $30 goes on destroying it.
UN biodiversity chief Astrid Schomaker told journalists in Yerevan that “if you hear there is no finance, please do not believe it” because economies are continuing to grow. “It is being spent on activities that harm the economy rather than those that work with nature and sustain life on this planet,” she said.
Guterres said developed countries tend to say they are grappling with budget constraints due to increased defence expenditure, which “in my view does not justify a reduction” in international aid. He added that existing resources can be multiplied if they are used to mobilise private capital.
Campaigners, companies and the Armenian government want to shift the needle on this situation at COP17 by highlighting how positive subsidies help restore biodiversity. They will launch a flagship call to action that will be taken forward by countries and groups working to reform damaging incentives.
Global review: the main act
The Global Review of Collective Progress – a bit like the Global Stocktake for climate action – is set to be the most important outcome from COP17, and it will be the first time this process unfolds at the biodiversity talks. The actions decided in Yerevan will respond to the gaps outlined in the State of Biodiversity Action report and determine whether countries can turn the tide of biodiversity loss this decade.
Overall, the report shows that while countries have taken action to address all 23 targets in the GBF, none “present a fully positive picture”. A target to strengthen the resilience of ecosystems to climate impacts is the only one with high relative progress, the report says, as government have already made effective interventions that show “a positive trend”.
The report assessed each country’s national targets, which define their contribution to the global goals, as well as their separate National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plans (NBSAPs) outlining how they will achieve the national targets.
But it does not paint a complete picture, since at the cut-off date, only 89 NBSAPs and national targets from 162 countries had been submitted, leaving out a couple of dozen plans that arrived late. Pacific island nations said this might undercount commitments.
Many of those lacking an NBSAP are biodiversity-rich developing countries, which say they need financial and technical support to fully develop these plans. Some large nations pending an NBSAP include South Africa, Bolivia and Russia.
Since the GBF was agreed in 2022, governments have mostly focused on developing their biodiversity targets and plans, while the lion’s share of implementation is expected to happen towards the end of the decade, according to UN biodiversity chief Schomaker.
But O’Donnell said “accelerated political ambition” is still needed to improve commitments and translate them into effective protection on the ground or at sea.
The post Countries urged to ramp up “insufficient” nature policies at COP17 appeared first on Climate Home News.
Countries urged to ramp up “insufficient” nature policies at COP17
Countries will meet in Armenia this month to carry out the first global review of progress towards meeting key nature targets by 2030.
These targets – and the wider ambition to halt and reverse biodiversity loss around the world – were agreed in the landmark Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework in 2022.
But the ambitions will not be achieved in time for the 2030 deadline unless action “accelerates rapidly”, a key UN report found.
It noted that nations are falling short on 22 of 23 nature targets, which focus on restoring ecosystems, increasing nature finance and reducing harmful subsidies.
This report and other findings will inform the global progress review taking place at the COP17 biodiversity summit in Armenia over 19-30 October.
The sections below summarise the report’s findings on where progress has – and has not – been made on each of the 23 targets.
They also rank the extent to which countries have addressed elements of each target on a national basis. Click on each target for more information. Key terms are defined throughout each section and in a glossary below.
The post COP17: Tracking progress towards the UN’s 2030 nature targets appeared first on Carbon Brief.
https://interactive.carbonbrief.org/nature-targets-2030-progress/
The amount of finance for nature delivered to date “falls far short” of what is needed to meet the UN’s global goals, according to a report released ahead of the COP17 biodiversity summit.
The global stocktaking report, prepared by the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (UN CBD) ahead of this month’s summit in Armenia, finds that developed nations are failing to close the $200bn “biodiversity finance gap”.
Initiatives designed to support this goal are also stumbling, with a special “framework” fund for biodiversity receiving less than $140m from developed countries in the past two years and the “landmark” Cali Fund receiving only $6,000 from private companies.
The availability of finance – or lack thereof – is likely to be a key point of contention in negotiations at COP17 in Yerevan, Armenia, which begin on 19 October.
Target for 2025 ‘not achieved’
At COP15 in 2022, 196 countries agreed to an ambitious g