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July 24, 2025 14 mins

The World Court has handed down a landmark decision finding countries could be required to pay compensation to other nations affected by their climate harms.

It’s the result of a historic case initiated by a group of law students from Pacific Island nations which face risks from rising seas.

In today’s episode, we’ll explain the lead-up to this decision, what the World Court is, and what it might mean for countries around the world.

Hosts: Lucy Tassell and Billi FitzSimons
Producer: Orla Maher

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Already and this is the Daily This is the Daily OS. Oh,
now it makes sense.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Good morning, and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Friday,
the twenty fifth of July. I'm Lucy Tassel.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
I'm belief that Simon's the World.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Court has handed down a landmark decision finding countries could
be required to pay compensation to other nations affected by
their climate harms. It's the result of a historic case
initiated by a group of law students from Pacific island
nations which face risks from rising seas. In today's episode,
we'll explain the lead up to this decision, what the

(00:42):
World Court is, and what it might mean for countries
around the world.

Speaker 1 (00:46):
Before we get into today's deep dive, here is a
quick message from our sponsor. So, Lucy, there is so
much to unpack here. Yeah, but I want to start
by explaining the World Court is. So, it's officially called
the International Court of Justice. Yeah, for anyone who's not
familiar with it, what is it?

Speaker 2 (01:07):
Yeah? So, the ICJ is it's one of the main
bodies of the United Nations, you know how like we
think of the United Nations as having agencies. It also
has the General Assembly which is if you ever did
model UN that's where that's what you're mimicking.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
YEP.

Speaker 2 (01:22):
One of its bodies is the ICJ. It's also known
as the World Court. As I said, it basically decides
on disputes between two different countries that can come to
it with an issue. It can also decide on legal
issues brought to it by the UN, so the UN
General Assembly can vote and say, we need a resolution

(01:43):
on this kind of legal issue that might not necessarily
be between two opposing countries. We need advice. It has
fifteen judges and it hands down its decisions in the
Hague in the Netherlands. Its rulings are typically binding, but
it's hard to enforce them, as it is with their
any kind of dispute between two nations. And then I

(02:03):
should also say it's different to the ic C or
the International Criminal Court, so that court oversees trials of
individuals who are accused of crimes against civilians during wars,
things like genocide, torture, sexual violence, and it steps in
when those individuals countries are quote unable or unwilling to

(02:23):
take them to trial. So you've got the World Court,
which is between countries or deciding on issues that affect
the whole world. And then you've got the icc which
is about people. Got it, And we're talking about the
ic JA. Like you said, that's called the World Court
and it's basically considered the world's top court. Yes, and
so the reason we're talking about it today is because

(02:45):
they have handed down this big decision on countries climate responsibilities.
How did this case.

Speaker 1 (02:51):
Come to the court in the first place.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
Well, I think it has really interesting origins. So it
starts in twenty nineteen with a group of law students
at the US University of the South Pacific. They started
a campaign called Pacific Island Students Fighting Climate Change or oh,
that's actually not a good acronym, PISFCC. Never mind, Pacific
Island Students Fighting Climate Change. We'll just say the students

(03:14):
for clarity. Their aim was to have the ICJ hand
down a legal opinion about countries climate change obligations, which
has now succeeded all these years down the line. So
these students are from some of the countries that are
facing an immediate risk from climate change impacts? Would they
particularly rising sea levels? We can understand kind of intellectually

(03:36):
what happens when the sea rises and you live on
a small island. In August twenty twenty two, Vanawatu brought
the student's campaign to a meeting of leaders of Pacific
countries that includes Australia, and those countries' leaders agreed to
take the student's request to the UN. In twenty twenty three,
the UN General Assembly voted on this being taken to

(03:58):
the ICJ's there's a lot of procedural steps and the
UN agreed this should be sent to the ICJ to consider.
So it's Vanowatu bringing it on the student's behalf because
as I said, it's the World Court, like a country
has to be involved. But then it ends up being
this kind of legal decision function of the court rather
than a court case, although as I'll explain, we could

(04:21):
see a court case in the future.

Speaker 1 (04:23):
Right, it's quite a cool story that this all came
from university students and that the UN took them so seriously.

Speaker 2 (04:30):
It's maybe the most successful group project of all time.

Speaker 1 (04:33):
Yeah, yeah, that's a great way to look at it.
And so then what were they asking the ICJ to consider.

Speaker 2 (04:40):
It's all wrapped up in a lot of legal ease,
and so I think it can be boiled down to
two main questions. The first question is what does international
law require countries to do to protect the environment from
human caused climate change? Human caused climate change is also
sometimes called anthropogenic. And then the second question and is
if countries are found to have caused significant harm to

(05:04):
the climate system, negatively impacting particularly small island nations and
also future generations, what should the consequences be. I mean,
you can't send a country to jail, so what can
we say should be the consequence.

Speaker 1 (05:18):
I'm always fascinated by this area of international law because,
as you kind of touched on at the start, it's
really hard to enforce that because the world doesn't have
one global set of legislation that we all agree on.
What we do have, though, in this space, is the
Paris Agreement. So when we talk about international law when
it comes to climate change, is that what we're talking about?

(05:39):
The Paris Agreement.

Speaker 2 (05:40):
Yeah, that's a big part of it. It's not the
only one, but I would say it's kind of the
big boy. It's the main piece of climate kind of.
It's a binding agreement, is what I should say. So
it's legally binding, and countries that are party to it
so they've signed it, they agree to abide by its terms,
have a requirement to limit their carbon emissions and their pollution.
They have committed to cutting their emissions with the intention

(06:03):
of limiting global average temperature increases to one point five
degrees celsius above the levels that they were at before
the Industrial Revolution, the cause of all the things that
go into the atmosphere. I will say, if you're party
to the agreement, it's legally binding. You don't have to
continue being a party to the agreement. As we've seen

(06:23):
with the Trump administration twice over has pulled the US
out of the Paris Agreement. So the US enters under
Obama is pulled out under Trump, re enters under Biden,
is now being re pulled out again by Trump. So
countries reserve the right to back out of it if
they don't want to abide by its terms. And I mean,

(06:44):
I guess we'll wait and see.

Speaker 1 (06:45):
Okay, So we have those two questions that were put
to the ICJ. I want to remind listeners of the
first one. It was what does international law require countries
to do to protect the environment from human caused climate change?
Now that we have the ruling, yeah, how did they
answer that question?

Speaker 2 (07:02):
So the first one, basically, the court summarized all those
bits of international law covering the climate as I've just done,
such as the Paris Agreement. It reiterated countries have responsibilities
under these agreements, and specifically it said when a country
fails to quote take appropriate action to protect the climate
system from greenhouse gas emissions, it may constitute an internationally

(07:26):
wrongful act, which is attributable to that state. When they
say state, they mean country. And then there are two
clarifications from that point. Again, I mean I mentioned for
a lot of legal ease, and I'm just talking about
the summary document over hundreds of pages of the full decision.
So basically that means that when we talk about greenhouse

(07:46):
gas emissions, they're talking about things emitted from producing and
consuming fossil fuels like oil. They also said this could
be attributed to giving companies licenses to create new fossil
fuel projects. And then the second thing they said, which
I thought was interesting, was that the court said producing
greenhouse gases is not in itself illegal, but failing to

(08:09):
keep those emissions below a certain threshold very much is illegal.
So again they're just reiterating stop doing things that could
negatively impact the environment without a counterbalance, given your obligations
under these international legal agreements like the Paris Agreement.

Speaker 1 (08:27):
So essentially what they're saying in relation to that first
question is that countries are indeed legally liable for their
contribution to climate change.

Speaker 2 (08:36):
Yes, and just outlining a few of the ways that
that can be the case. Basically just unlimited greenhouse gas
emissions with no limitations. That's illegal and you can be
held liable.

Speaker 1 (08:48):
And interesting that they're also including the private sector. Yes,
so they're responsible for everything that happens in your country.

Speaker 2 (08:54):
That was the most interesting part of this to me, definitely. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (08:58):
And then in terms of the second question, so remind
of what that question was, it said, if countries are
found to have caused significant harm to the climate system,
negatively impacting small island nations and future generations, what should
the consequences be?

Speaker 2 (09:11):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (09:11):
What was their answer to that?

Speaker 2 (09:13):
So they found that countries have a duty to comply
with these obligations, and that as part of that duty,
they can be asked to pay compensation to other countries
that are harmed directly by their failure to prevent excessive emissions.
The legal version is that countries can be made to
pay if quote, a sufficiently direct and certain causal nexus

(09:35):
can be shown between the wrongful act and injury. So
basically saying, if you can draw a straight line cause
and effect. Let's say, for example, hypothetically Australia Australia launches
a huge gas drilling project and scientists can prove that
this project directly causes seatwaters to rise around Vadawatu, then

(09:57):
Australia would be held legally liable and could pay compensation
to Vanawatu for the effects of that project as a hypothetical.

Speaker 1 (10:05):
Yes, so interesting.

Speaker 2 (10:06):
Yeah, and they also need to commit to not doing
it again countries that are found guilty of this, And
as I said before, countries must regulate the emissions produced
by privately owned companies within their countries. So let's say
it's not Australia that launches the big gas drilling project.
But let's say again hypothetically, if Woodside Energy were to

(10:27):
launch a new gas drilling project and the same process
played out, then Australia could have to pay compensation.

Speaker 1 (10:34):
This idea about a duty of care is not new.
I feel like over the past five years or so,
we've heard so much about it. Yeah, and it's a
topic that's come up here in Australia in our courts.

Speaker 2 (10:45):
Yeah, so Yeah, Australia has kind of wrangled legally with
this idea of a duty of care over citizens, which
I think is related to this idea of a duty
to comply with your obligations under international law. So, in fact,
last week, the Federal Court ruled the government does not
have a duty of care over to Torres Strait Islander
traditional owners Uncle Pabi Pabi and Uncle Paul Kabi, and

(11:10):
also their communities in order to protect them from climate change.
In his judgment, Justice Michael Wigney said there are no
legal remedies for climate harms caused as a result of
high level policies, which is interestingly kind of one of
the things that this ICJ ruling is setting out to address.
Justice Wigney said he was bound by a previous Federal

(11:31):
Court decision in twenty twenty two, which had in itself
overturned a ruling that found the government had a duty
of care to young Australians to consider the long term
impacts of fossil fuel projects. So there was a decision
in the young people's favor and then it was overturned
by the Federal Court, and that overturning is what Justice

(11:52):
Weekney said he was bound by when he ruled against
the Torres Strait islander. Men. But I will be very
interested to see what comes from this ICJ ruling if
a future case could possibly have more success.

Speaker 1 (12:07):
It's so complex when you have different courts kind of
finding very different things that actually kind of contradict each other.

Speaker 2 (12:15):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (12:17):
And last question you mentioned earlier about whether or not
this is actually legally enforceable, because it's one thing for
it to be I guess legally binding, but it's another
thing for it to be enforceable.

Speaker 2 (12:29):
Yeah, what does that look like here? So my understanding
is that this ruling by the ICJ was the second
thing that they can do, so not a mediation between
two states, but to say, we've answered this legal question
from you, so this is our opinion. So their decision
in and of itself is not there's not like a law.

(12:49):
There's not really a legal precedent in that sense. I see. However,
what they have said is that countries have a responsibility
under existing international law to not break the rules.

Speaker 1 (13:02):
Got it?

Speaker 2 (13:02):
So their decision in and of itself is not a
legally binding thing, but it has the consequence of holding
countries to legally binding obligations.

Speaker 1 (13:12):
Got it. So it kind of lays the path down
for if a country did want to see another country
for their contribution to climate change, which they say has
directly impacted them. Yeah, this decision kind of lays the
path for that to now happen.

Speaker 2 (13:27):
Well, I've not trained as a barrister at the Justice,
but that is my understanding.

Speaker 1 (13:32):
Well, you have not trained as a barrisster, but you
explained that expertly. So thanks Leasie, Thank you so much,
Thanks Billy, and thank you so much for listening to
this episode of The Daily Os. We'll be back this
afternoon with your evening headlines, but until then, have a
great day.

Speaker 2 (13:52):
My name is Lily Madden and I'm a proud Arunda
Bunjelung Chalcultin woman from Gadigal country. The Daily Os acknowledges
that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the
Gadigal people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and torrest
Rate island and nations. We pay our respects to the
first peoples of these countries both past and present.
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