On 23 July 2025, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) unanimously affirmed that the commitments from states at yearly COPs are not just political in character – they are also legal.
States now have an obligation to prevent significant environmental harm and cooperate in good faith to protect the environment.These obligations are owed by all states to each other, even if they have not signed a treaty. The ICJ also framed the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment as a pre-condition of other human rights.
This all started in a classroom in 2019 in Vanuatu, where a group of students brought to the Pacific Islands Leaders Forum Meeting in Tuvalu their case of climate injustice, along with a proposed legal pathway.
Fast forward to 2023 – led by Vanuatu and building on the students’ idea, 130 United Nations member states co- sponsored a resolution to seek an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJ). This would mean that the ICJ would decide what nations’ obligations are for their climate change commitments and what the consequences are, should these obligations not be met.
But what does the advisory opinion mean, in practice? We sat down with climate lawyer Loes van Dijk, founder of Climate Court, to discuss how the advisory opinion will work going forward. We also discussed why understanding your legal rights, international law, and climate law is important for education, and how young people like the Pacific Island Students Fighting Climate Change, have the power to make a difference.
To use the case study of the Pacific Island Students Fighting Climate Change in your classroom, download our unit titled: Climate Justice Case Study.