The top United Nations court recently announced that it will hear arguments on a major climate question in December.
Several UN member states, led by Vanuatu, have asked the International Court of Justice to clarify what legal obligations countries have in addressing climate change — and what consequences they face if they don’t meet those obligations.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres also made headlines this past week, calling on big polluters to take responsibility and reduce emissions.
Attorney Julian Aguon is with Blue Ocean Law, the firm representing Vanuatu in the advisory opinion case. Pacific islands are among the most vulnerable.
"What we're asking the court to do is to bring to bear on the question of climate change the full panoply of international legal rules. We're trying to change the world essentially, especially for the benefit of the most vulnerable," Aguon said.
Aguon said the case has been in the works for almost five years because the request for an advisory opinion needed approval from a simple majority of the UN member states.
"We want, essentially, to help Vanuatu, help the rest of the world break out of the sort of quagmire that we're in. In some ways, the international climate change regime has suffered from one thing, like legal ambiguity surrounding the extent or the scope of the obligations of all countries to avert climate change and the worst effects of climate change."
The University of Hawaiʻi law school alum also wrote a book, “No Country for Eight-Spot Butterflies," about the importance of Indigenous rights and the impacts of climate change.
"When it comes to climate change, we have been kind of more or less inundated with facts. We have facts for days, you know, and they haven't changed our behavior," he said. "The way to do that is not necessarily by facts, but by stories, you know, maybe science in the end won't save us, but stories will."
Aguon will be giving a talk Wednesday evening as part of the University of Hawaiʻi Better Tomorrow Speaker Series.
This interview aired on The Conversation on Sept. 3, 2024. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. on HPR-1.
