Category: Blog

At the end of its 58th session, taking place in Interlaken, Switzerland, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the Synthesis Report of the Sixth Assessment Cycle on Monday, March 20, 2023.

On the dedicated official website, the Summary for Policy Makers (SPM) and the longer report are now available, together with the figures representing data in the Synthesis Report (SYR) and its headline statements. The full volume is coming soon.

The SYR summarizes the findings of the reports produced during the Sixth Assessment Cycle: the contributions of the three IPCC Working Groups (respectively on the physical basis of climate change; on impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability; on climate change mitigation) and the three Special Reports (respectively on global warming of 1.5°C, on oceans and the cryosphere, and on land use). The reports are based on peer-reviewed literature published between the conclusion of the previous assessment cycle in 2014 and 2019; the process involves more than one thousand authors from all over the world. The intergovernmental panel, composed by representatives of the States that are parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), approves line by line the wording of the SPM by voting in the plenary session, while it accepts the full reports. In any case, scientific data is not negotiable.

This SYR has a new structure if compared with previous ones, aimed at better-integrating knowledge from the different Working Groups and providing relevant information on near and long-term climate change and possible climate action. The sections of the SYR are dedicated to the “Current Status and Trends”, assessing both the changing climate and the implementation of adaptation and mitigation measures, to “Long-Term Climate and Development Futures”, describing a range of socio-economic futures up to 2100, and to “Near-Term Responses in a Changing Climate”, displaying opportunities for effective action up to 2040.

It is relevant that this report is destined to inform the first Global Stocktake of the implementation of the Paris Agreement under the UNFCCC, which will be concluded during the 28th Conference of the Parties of the FCCC (COP 28), taking place in Dubai from November 30 until December 12, 2023. The Global Stocktake is a critical juncture as it will show whether countries and other stakeholders are making progress toward the achievement of the goals agreed upon in the Paris Agreement (“holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C”).

According to the SYR, they are not: the report states there is high confidence that “global greenhouse gas emissions have continued to increase, with unequal historical and ongoing contributions” and “global GHG emissions in 2030 implied by nationally determined contributions (NDCs) announced by October 2021 make it likely that warming will exceed 1.5°C during the 21st century and make it harder to limit warming below 2°C”. The report carves into stone that “human activities, principally through emissions of greenhouse gases, have unequivocally caused global warming, with global surface temperature reaching 1.1°C above 1850–1900 in 2011–2020”, and that human-caused climate change has already led to impacts, losses, and damages to nature and people, while “every increment of global warming will intensify multiple and concurrent hazards”.

This discouraging picture is followed by a message of urgency and hope: there is high confidence that “deep, rapid, and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions would lead to a discernible slowdown in global warming within around two decades”. Nonetheless, some future changes are unavoidable, but adaptation measures are available and should be taken today before they become more constrained and less effective. According to the IPCC Chair Hoesung Lee, “mainstreaming effective and equitable climate action will not only reduce losses and damages for nature and people, it will also provide wider benefits” (see IPCC press release).

As the report clearly states, choices and actions of this decade will have impacts now and for thousands of years. A meaningful concept in the SYR is that of climate-resilient development, a model that integrates adaptation and mitigation to advance sustainable development for all. Increased International cooperation would be crucial to the implementation of such an approach, and the report confirms that, more broadly, political commitment, multilevel governance, institutional frameworks, laws, policies, and strategies are fundamental for effective climate action.

Quoting the IPCC press release on the SYR, the report “brings into sharp focus the losses and damages (…) hitting the most vulnerable people and ecosystems especially hard”. Scientific findings in the report are interpreted in the light of climate justice principles: starting from the fact that “vulnerable communities who have historically contributed the least to current climate change are disproportionately affected”, and highlighting that “prioritizing equity, climate justice, social justice, inclusion, and just transition processes can enable adaptation and ambitious mitigation actions”. In the words of the IPCC Chair mentioned above, Hoesung Lee, “we live in a diverse world in which everyone has different responsibilities and different opportunities to bring about change. Some can do a lot while others will need support to help them manage the change.”

As no new IPCC reports are scheduled to be released before 2030, this SYR seems of paramount importance for political leaders, decision-makers, the different stakeholder groups, and, not least, climate change litigation. The IPCC reports have become a source of evidence for judicial proceedings, and, vice versa, the contribution of Working Group III on mitigation released in 2022 mentioned the relevance of climate change litigation in climate governance (see a comment on this in a previous blog post). 

The effort of the SYR authors toward the accessibility of the information is noticeable. As usual, the report is written in the so-called calibrated language, the distinctive feature of the IPCC publications. Each finding is grounded in an evaluation of underlying evidence and agreement: the level of confidence is expressed by five qualifiers from very low to very high, while the likelihood of outcomes is expressed with eight qualifiers ranging from exceptionally unlikely to virtually certain. A novelty of the SYR consists of italicized annotations in the figures: simple explanations written in non-technical language, to help non-experts navigate complex content. IPCC authors also provided online tools for readers with different expertise to navigate through the panel’s findings, such as the WGI Interactive Atlas and the WGI SPM Figure Explorer.

Some of the straightforward figures of this SYR are destined to become iconic. Figure SPM.1 effectively represents how the extent to which current and future generations will experience a hotter and different world depends on choices taken now and in the near term. This figure already appeared in several posts on social networks in the days following the SYR release, while Twitter registered almost a 1,000% increase in user activity around key climate hashtags compared to the previous week. 

Written by Elena Nalato, Ph.D. Student, Ph.D. in Sustainable Development and Climate Change, University School for Advanced Studies IUSS Pavia, Italy

Picture credits: Fog Opening the Dawn, Jeong Jinsil, Weather and Climate Photography & Video Contest 2021, Korea Meteorological Administration

On 12 December 2022, the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) received a request for an advisory opinion on the interpretation of the obligation to preserve and protect the marine environment under the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) in relation to climate change impacts such as ocean warming, sea level rise and ocean acidification. The request was made by the Commission of Small Island States on Climate Change and International Law (COSIS), an international organisation established by way of an international agreement in late 2021, whose mandate expressly includes requesting advisory opinions from the ITLOS (Article 2(2)). The COSIS project is complementary to the initiative led by Vanuatu along with other small island and climate-vulnerable states to request an advisory opinion on climate change from the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

On 20 November 2022, the latter project culminated in a draft resolution text which was notified to all UN member states and is set to be tabled for discussion and voting at the UN General Assembly in early 2023. This draft, prepared by a coalition of 17 countries, asks the ICJ to answer two questions based on conventional and customary international law, viz.  

• what are the obligations of States to ‘ensure the protection of the climate system and other parts of the environment for present and future generations’; and
• what legal consequences these obligations envisage for those states that have caused significant harm to the climate system and other parts of the environment, with respect to injured, specially affected or climate-vulnerable countries and ‘peoples and individuals’ of present and future generations affected by the adverse effects of climate change.

The ICJ’s advisory jurisdiction extends to ‘any legal question’ requested by the UN General Assembly and the Security Council, and legal question ‘arising within the scope of [the] activities’ of other authorized bodies (Article 65, ICJ Statute; Article 96, UN Charter). However, the fact that the Court is requested to answer a legal question by way of a UN General Assembly resolution does not mean that it has a duty to exercise its advisory jurisdiction. For reasons of propriety, the ICJ may refuse to answer legal questions posed to it.

In its jurisprudence, the ICJ has explained that it will not answer a request if doing so ‘would have the effect of circumventing the principle that a State is not obliged to allow its disputes to be submitted to judicial settlement without its consent’ (Western Sahara, [33]). This is not a hurdle for the request at hand as the draft resolution does not single out individual countries who may be regarded as violating international legal rules and principles relating to the ‘protection of the climate system or other parts of the environment for present and future generations.’ The initiative seems to be motivated by a desire for greater clarity on climate change related obligations and the consequences of their breach. There is no doubt that small island states and other vulnerable countries are unsatisfied by the level of protection or the depth of obligations to take protective measures envisaged by the international climate change regime.

While the initiative may be perceived as an attempt to circumvent the problems associated with the international law-making process by asking for judicial law-making, it may be argued that the initiative hopes for the Court to articulate existing international legal norms which may be derived from different legal regimes including international human rights law and the law of the sea, and different kinds of norms (rules and principles). Which one of these two frames the Court adopts is significant as it has implied in a previous case that it may be compelled to refuse a request for advisory opinion on account of its influence on ongoing international negotiations (Thirlway, 2006, at [17]).

It remains to be seen if a majority of the UN General Assembly members are convinced of the merits of adopting this resolution, although some reporting suggests that at least 100 countries have indicated their support for the resolution. It is also worth noting that previous efforts of a similar kind by the Marshall Islands and Palau failed to reach the formal negotiation stage at the Assembly. The initiative led by COSIS, on the other hand, does not face such a hurdle. In contrast to the ICJ, access to the ITLOS to obtain an advisory opinion is broad. The Tribunal’s jurisdiction comprises all matters specifically provided for in any international agreement which confers jurisdiction on the tribunal (Article 21, ITLOS Statute); and the Tribunal ‘may give an advisory opinion on a legal question if an international agreement related to the purposes of the [UNCLOS] specifically provides for the submission to the Tribunal of a request for such an opinion’ (Article 138, ITLOS Rules). It is necessary that the requesting body has been authorized to submit a request by such an international agreement, and the request contains ‘a legal question’ having a sufficient connection with the purposes and principles of that international agreement (SFRC Advisory Opinion, [60], [68]).

The text of the Agreement establishing the COSIS clearly indicates that it is an international agreement related to the purposes of the UNCLOS, especially concerning the protection and preservation of the marine environment as well as the preservation of interests in the maritime rights and entitlements provided for under the UNCLOS. The request filed by COSIS asks the Tribunal to clarify the ‘specific obligations’ of parties to the UNCLOS to take measures relating to greenhouse gas emissions which cause deleterious effects on the marine environment; and measures responding to climate change impacts on the marine environment, including ocean warming, sea-level rise and ocean acidification. In the past, the ITLOS did not shy away from answering clarificatory legal questions surrounding states’ obligations to respond to the global problem of Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) Fishing, which was brought to it by an inter-governmental fisheries cooperation organization established by an agreement between seven West African coastal states who were particularly affected by IUU Fishing (SFRC Advisory Opinion). The agreement establishing the COSIS seems to be inspired by this example and may be rightly described as the first jurisdictional agreement concluded for the primary purpose of seeking advisory opinions from the ITLOS. Considering its approach in the SFRC Advisory Opinion, it is likely that the ITLOS will find that it does indeed have the jurisdiction to give an advisory opinion on COSIS’ request.

Written by Pranav Ganesan (Research Assistant at the Chair of Professor Helen Keller, University of Zurich)

On 27 February 2022, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the second part of its sixth assessment report entitled “Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability”. The Working Group II report is the second installment of the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), which will be completed this year. Approved by 195 member governments of the IPCC, the Working Group II report focuses more strongly on solutions and adaptions to climate change than earlier reports. By introducing and using several new components, such as an atlas to present data and findings on observed climate change impacts and risks, some of Working Group II’s key findings were as follows:

• Climate change is a threat to human welfare and the health of the planet. The observed impacts, projected risks, magnitude, and trends of vulnerability indicate that global action for climate-resilient development is more urgent than previously assessed in the IPCC’s fifth assessment report (AR5) of 2014. 
• Causing dangerous and widespread damage to nature and people, climate change has already led to some irreversible impacts as human systems and ecosystems are pushed beyond their ability to adapt.  
• Across sectors and regions, it is observed that climate change disproportionately affects the most vulnerable people. As a result, about 3.3 to 3.6 billion people, mainly living in developing countries, are highly vulnerable to climate change.  
• The report expects that regions dependent on glaciers and snowmelt are expected to experience seasonal reductions in water supply of up to 50 percent. 
• With rising temperature levels, losses and damages will increase and additional human and natural systems are highly likely to reach adaptation limits. If temperatures rise more than 2 degrees, many measures will lose their effect, making adaptions to climate change almost impossible. 
• Compared to higher warming levels, near-term actions limiting global warming to close to 1.5 degrees Celsius would substantially reduce losses and damages related to climate change to both humans and ecosystems, but cannot eliminate them all. 
• Adaption progress is likely to be unevenly distributed, with observed adaption gaps. By prioritizing immediate and near-term climate risk reduction, the opportunity for needed transformational adaptation is reduced. 
• Enabling conditions, including, for example, political commitment, institutional frameworks, and mobilization of adequate financial resources, are key to the implementation, acceleration, and sustainability of adaption in natural and human systems.  

Written by Nicole Lüthi (Research Assistant at the Chair of Professor Helen Keller, University of Zurich)

On 13 December, Russia vetoed a UN Security Council Resolution that would have framed climate change as a a threat to international peace and security. The draft Resolution, which was spearheaded by Ireland and Niger and was co-sponsored by 113 UN member States, would have called the Security Council to incorporate “information on the security implications of climate change” into its work on peace and security.

The UN Security Council has been discussing the security risks linked to climate change since 2007, and past resolutions have mentioned the destabilizing effects of climate change in specific contexts, for example in Iraq. The draft resolution’s text would have called on the UN Secretary-General to make security risks linked to climate change a “central component” of efforts to prevent conflict. The Resolution was premised on the understanding that climate change can “lead…to social tensions…, exacerbating, prolonging, or contributing to the risk of future conflicts and instability and posing a key risk to global peace, security, and stability”. It recognized the need for “a comprehensive, whole of UN approach to address climate change and its effects”.

A zero draft of the resolution was circulated after a 23 September high-level open debate on climate and security, organised by Ireland. No vote was held on that draft text due to resistance from Russia, China and the United States. On 13 December, India also voted against the Resolution, while Russia used its veto power and China abstained from the vote. According to the representatives of these States, the issue of climate change and its security implications should more appropriately be discussed in the context of other efforts, for example the Framework Convention on Climate Change to avoid ‘politicizing‘ the question.

On Friday, 8 October 2021, the UN Human Rights Council issued its Resolution 48/13, which recognizes the human right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment. On the same day, in its Resolution 48/14, the Human Rights Council also established the office of a Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights in the context of climate change.

The recognition of the human right to a healthy environment in Resolution 48/13 has been hailed as a major success for efforts to ensure that human rights law can adequately respond to environmental harms, and especially to the harms associated with climate change. The succinct resolution ‘[r]ecognizes the right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment as a human right that is important for the enjoyment of human rights’ (§ 1), notes its interrelationship with other human rights (§ 2), and encourages States to capacity-build, cooperate, share good practices, adopt policies, and continue to take into account their environmental human rights obligations and commitments (§ 3).

In addition, the Human Rights Council’s Resolution 48/14 has simultaneously created the office of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights in the context of climate change for a period of three years. The Special Rapporteur, who has not yet been appointed, will study the adverse effect of climate change on human rights, identify challenges, synthesize knowledge, promote and exchange views and best practices, raise awareness, seek views and contributions from States and other relevant stakeholders, facilitate the exchange of technical assistance, capacity-building and cooperation, coordinate with other actors, conduct country visits, participate in relevant events, integrate a gender-responsive, age-sensitive, disability inclusive and social-inclusion perspective, participate in the creation of standards for corporate actors, coordinate closely with other Special Rapporteurs in related thematic areas, and report to the Human Rights Council annually. The Resolution also requests the Advisory Committee of the Human Rights Council to prepare a report, in close cooperation with the new Special Rapporteur, on the impact of new climate protection technologies on human rights.

On the EJIL:Talk! Blog, Annalisa Savaresi has summarized these developments, discussing the various advantages of the recognition of the human right to a healthy environment. This includes improved access to justice, a strengthened basis for activism and the foundation for legislative protections of environmental interests. Overall, the recognition of this right is also described as drawing increased attention to environmental harms and issues.