Joie Chowdhury is senior attorney and climate justice and accountability manager at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) and Jule Schnakenberg is director of World’s Youth for Climate Justice (WYCJ).

A resolution that will come before the UN General Assembly (UNGA) later this month brings a reckoning for multilateralism: will governments stand behind international law or not?

On May 20, UN member states will consider a resolution to welcome and operationalise the International Court of Justice’s historic Advisory Opinion (ICJ AO) on states’ obligations in respect of climate change, which clarified that they have binding legal duties to prevent and repair climate harm.

Translating that clarity into action should be straightforward. That the resolution is instead contested exposes efforts to evade responsibility. Those most responsible for the crisis will often be the first to resist accountability – that’s predictable, but it’s not acceptable.

At a time when multilateral cooperation is under strain, the resolution’s backing by a strong majority of countries, or its passing by consensus, holds power. It would send a clear signal: governments remain committed to the rule of law and to collective action to protect the climate, a shared foundation on which all life depends.

State of play

Led by Vanuatu, with support from a core group of diverse countries including the Netherlands, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Barbados, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Palau, Jamaica, the Philippines and Burkina Faso, the resolution, now open for co-sponsorship, has already secured broad cross-regional backing – especially from countries at the sharp edge of climate change.

The final text of the draft resolution faithfully reflects the full breadth of legal obligations articulated in the advisory opinion. It affirms the imperative of a just transition away from fossil fuels, the stability of legal entitlements for countries facing sea-level rise, and the duty to provide full reparation for climate-related harm under international law. It also underscores the centrality of equity and provides for structured follow-up for implementation, including a report on ways to do that from the UN Secretary-General.

While the final resolution text could have gone further on critical justice dimensions, it reflects a carefully balanced outcome, integrating diverse perspectives emerging from the genuine engagement of over a hundred states.

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In negotiations, resistance tracked a familiar set of arguments to protect fossil fuel interests and evade accountability. Many of the usual suspects – polluters with disproportionately high historical and current responsibility for the climate crisis, including major oil producers – have engaged actively, but with the aim of weakening the authority of the Court’s opinion, or references to fossil fuels in the resolution.

There is still time for things to shift. For the incoming COP presidencies of Australia, Türkiye and Ethiopia, and European states that profess their climate leadership, positioning on this resolution is a litmus test of their commitment to ensuring that climate action accords with the law.

Closing the accountability gap

Claims from countries with a disproportionate share of emissions that the resolution duplicates existing processes, particularly under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), miss the point. The climate treaty regime has yet to deliver accountability. It has not delivered on ambition, nor on the imperative to phase out fossil fuels, and certainly not on tackling loss and damage. The draft resolution text explicitly seeks to ensure coordination, coherence and complementarity with existing processes, while closing the accountability gap.

Assertions that the resolution “reinterprets” or “goes beyond” the advisory opinion similarly ring hollow. This is standard UN practice: General Assembly resolutions give effect to legal norms clarified by the Court. The text does not create new law; it reflects existing obligations in the Court’s own terms.

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It is also important to be clear: the advisory opinion itself stands as the most authoritative clarification of international law on climate change. Its weight or persuasiveness does not depend on this resolution. Since its delivery, it has been taken up by courts and policymakers worldwide. What is at stake is not whether states will act, but whether they will do so in good faith or under mounting pressure.

Consensus carries weight

The advisory opinion carries exceptional legitimacy: requested through a resolution adopted by consensus, following legal proceedings with record participation, and delivered unanimously. Against this backdrop, there is no credible basis for opposing a resolution that seeks to welcome and advance the AO.

Consensus would send a powerful message of states’ commitment to climate action and the rule of law, but the resolution does not require unanimity to pass. As precedents show, including the Ghana-led General Assembly resolution recognising the transatlantic slave trade as a crime against humanity, global majority support can carry decisive weight, even in the face of resistance from powerful states.

From the outset, the ICJ advisory opinion process has been driven and deeply shaped by youth leadership, and responding to their call now requires completing the task the General Assembly set for itself in 2023 by requesting an advisory opinion from the ICJ.

A vote for climate justice

In a powerful poem, Pacific environmental advocate Dylan Kava writes:

“….They call it negotiation.
We know it as survival.
While they draft options
our coastlines disappear…”

The survival and dignity of people facing escalating climate harm is not a matter of political convenience. It is a matter of existing law; a matter of political responsibility, moral courage and actual leadership.

We urge all member states to support the resolution as presented on May 20, with a view to adoption by consensus. History will not judge those in power by how forcefully they defended the status quo, but by whether they rose to meet a crisis that threatens us all.

The post ICJ follow-up resolution is a test of climate leadership at the UN appeared first on Climate Home News.

ICJ follow-up resolution is a test of climate leadership at the UN

Harjeet Singh is a climate activist and strategic advisor to the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative, as well as founding director of the Satat Sampada Climate Foundation.

For thirty years, global climate talks perfected policy paralysis around the primary cause of the climate crisis: fossil fuels. Within the UNFCCC negotiations, the “consensus card” was played with surgical precision by the fossil fuel industry and wealthy producer nations to block meaningful action.

For decades, talks were restricted to the “demand side” – reducing emissions – while the “supply side” – the extraction of oil, gas, and coal – was treated as a forbidden subject. This so-called progress was a treadmill, leading nowhere despite plenty of sweat.

The breaking point: from Belém to Santa Marta

The failure peaked at COP30 in Belém, where, despite widespread support, the final outcome contained no fossil fuel phase-out mandate. Instead, the world watched as the COP30 Presidency announced a “roadmap” initiative at the very end of the talks – a face-saving measure that lacked formal standing in the process.

The halls of Belém were once again crawling with lobbyists, ensuring that “consensus” remained a tool for delay. Recognising the UNFCCC logjam, Global South countries in the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative demanded a series of dedicated conferences.

Colombia, the biggest producer among them, broke the status quo by pioneering this new path: the First International Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels, joined by the Netherlands as co-host.

The pioneering conference in Santa Marta in late April moved us from the “if” to the “how”, signalling a shift from airy pledges to the reality of implementation. But as the dust settles, a more ancient struggle is resurfacing: the struggle for the “pen”.

The invisible hand of control

History shows that when developed nations can no longer block a process, they attempt to colonise it. In Santa Marta, we witnessed the opening gambit of a familiar play – exclusion followed by takeover. Critics signalled this early on in an open letter, calling out the systemic disregard for African lives and environments in global policy and the persistent marginalisation of Indigenous Peoples’ voices and concerns.

Under the guise of “technical support”, wealthy nations fought to steer the outcome of workstreams towards Global North-dominated institutions. Despite the expertise they may bring, why are the recognised bodies for this process exclusively based in an area representing only 20% of the world’s population?

The hastily assembled report containing the “Chairs’ Takeaways” from Santa Marta requires scrutiny and raises the following concerns:

• The Roadmap Trap: Connecting national transition plans to the Science Panel on the Global Energy Transition (SPGET) and the NDC Partnership. These bodies, largely dominated by Western experts, risk imposing frameworks that treat sovereign developing nations as markets for the private sector. Will “science” be used to legitimise a Global North-centric status quo while ignoring debt, trade and finance rules, and other forces that shape national policy?

• The Financial Architecture: Pushing the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) to lead the work on macroeconomic dependencies on fossil fuels. Expertise matters, but whose stability is going to be prioritised? Is it the communities losing their livelihoods, or the global financial systems that grew fat on fossil fuel rents?

• The Trade Filter: Bringing the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) – a club of wealthy nations – into “producer–consumer alignment”. This is a coup to ensure the international trade system keeps serving the West and its elites under the guise of “coordination”.

The “dos and don’ts” for developed nations

For decades, the responsibility of rich nations to provide public finance for climate action in vulnerable countries has been replaced by private sector “leverage”. Developed nations must stop using “climate finance” as a tool to open new markets for their multinational corporations and put actual, grant-based finance on the table to support the transition in the Global South.

They should also refrain from forcing every initiative back into the UNFCCC gridlock, where meaningful progress on a fossil fuel phase-out has been systematically blocked.

Finally, it is critical that the Santa Marta process is recognised as a sovereign space for historically silenced nations to hold polluters accountable, rather than being treated as a showroom for Western exports.

This requires addressing the hypocrisy of so-called “front runners”. Canada, France, Ireland, Australia and Norway attend these conferences as “leaders” while greenlighting oil and gas expansion. You cannot lead a transition while pouring fuel on the fire. Leadership requires immediately ending expansion; anything else is an expensive photo-op.

Unity as the ultimate tool

For developing nations, the path forward is radical unity. Global North diplomacy often seeks to divide and conquer through bilateral deals that bypass collective power. Developing nations must refuse to be cowed.

This is a chance to move beyond tools that prioritise debt and trade over development. Collectively, the Global South can build technical and financial frameworks that advance energy sovereignty and justice. South-South cooperation must be the primary engine of a fair transition that holds historical polluters accountable.

The road to Tuvalu 2027 – reclaiming the agenda

The announcement that Tuvalu will co-host the second conference in 2027 is a political necessity. Tuvalu, a least developed country, is a living symbol of the climate crisis and a vanguard of justice.

Tuvalu must have the power to set the agenda from day one. This cannot be another “safe space” for dialogue without commitment, as seen at the first conference. The road to Tuvalu must advance a mechanism that gained wider support in Santa Marta but was ignored in the Chairs’ Takeaways: a Fossil Fuel Treaty.

We need a framework to manage the decline of fossil fuel extraction based on fair shares and equity, turning international cooperation into support for resilient, renewable economies.

The process has only just begun. Santa Marta was the spark, but Tuvalu must be the engine room of implementation. The Global South must take the pen to script the transition rooted in equity and justice.

The post Developing countries must hold the pen to script the fossil fuel transition appeared first on Climate Home News.

Developing countries must hold the pen to script the fossil fuel transition

Campaigners working to limit the use of controversial sun-dimming technology have praised the Europe’s foreign ministers for warning of the risks such technology poses, but opinions remain split over whether it merits more research, with the European Union keeping its position open for now.

At a joint council meeting in Luxembourg, ministers representing the EU’s 27 member states signed off on a statement agreeing for the first time that they were “concerned that large-scale climate interventions, in particular solar radiation modification (SRM), pose significant risks for the climate, the environment, security and geopolitics”.

Their statement, issued in late April, called for a moratorium on deployment of SRM technologies, as well as “the full application of the precautionary principle to geoengineering” and for the EU to engage in international talks on international governance arrangements, including those related to research.

SRM refers to any deliberate attempt to reduce the amount of heat which reaches the Earth from the sun. This could be carried out by artificially brightening clouds or injecting aerosols into the atmosphere, which could reduce or reverse global warming but risk severe and unpredictable side-effects.

The risks of carrying out SRM are widely acknowledged but climate campaigners and scientists remain divided on to what extent and how its effects should be researched, with some arguing that such work normalises it and encourages its deployment.

Experts on both sides of the debate welcomed the EU’s statement but made contrasting calls on what should happen next. A more pro-research group said the EU should encourage responsible research into SRM’s effects while more anti-research campaigners said the EU should prevent research that could lead to SRM’s deployment and agree not to use it.

Responsible research

Giulia Neri, the interim director of climate interventions at the Brussels-based think-tank Centre for Future Generations (CFG), which supports research into SRM, told Climate Home News that the EU’s statement sends “an important and timely signal on the need for rules governing SRM”.

She added that the fact it was issued by foreign – not climate – ministers shows “a growing recognition that SRM is a geopolitically relevant technology and not merely a climate-related issue”.

Her colleague, CFG adviser on climate interventions, Matthias Honneger added that the EU nations’ ministers in charge of research “might also consider how responsible public research under European oversight can help maintain Europe’s influence”.

This is especially important, Honneger said, as “private and global actors increasingly dominate what we know about this technology and its risks and benefits”.

A well-funded US-Israeli company Stardust claims to be developing the ability to carry out SRM and is seeking customers – including the US government – to pay for them to do so.

Impossible to test

Mary Chuch, who campaigns against geoengineering for the Center for International Environmental Law, also welcomed the foreign ministers’ statement.

She said it was right to emphasise “the risks of highly speculative geoengineering technologies, centre the precautionary principle and reinforce the longstanding moratorium under the Convention on Biological Diversity”.

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But, rather than calling for more research, she and political scientist Frank Biermann called for the EU to join governments in Africa and the Pacific in calling for an international non-use agreement on solar geoengineering.

“As an immediate first step, the European Union must prevent research that could lead to the development and use of solar geoengineering technologies,” Biermann said.

Church said that solar geoengineering is “inherently unpredictable” and that it was “impossible to fully test for intended and unintended impacts without prolonged large-scale implementation”.

De facto moratorium

The council’s conclusion did not weigh in on the research debate, only resolving to engage in talks on the governance of research.

But European Commissioner for Startups, Research and Innovation Ekaterina Zaharieva said in 2024 that research should continue although it should be “rigorous and ethical, and it must take full account of the possible range of direct and indirect effects”.

Also in 2024, the Swiss government attempted to get countries at the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) to set up an expert group on SRM. But this failed due to opposition from the African Group, Colombia, Mexico and others, and Switzerland did not try again at the last UNEA in December 2025.

SRM is currently legal in most nations. But there has been a de facto global moratorium in place on geoengineering – which includes SRM – since 2010, when it was agreed by governments under the Convention on Biological Diversity, with exceptions for small-scale scientific research studies.

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