The United Nations General Assembly resolution requesting “ an advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the obligations of States in respect of climate change” is, in some ways, a surprising document. The main surprise is that it exists at all – international environmental law experts have noted that inviting a court into the politically-driven legally-averse realm of climate negotiations would represent a “paradigm shift,” or expressed doubts about whether such an invitation would result in an outcome helpful to vulnerable states or the world. Nevertheless, amid increasing frustrations with the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process, the possibility of such a referral kept coming up. The question has now been formally asked.
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