BERLIN: The UN maritime court on Tuesday ruled in favour of nine small island states who brought a case to seek increased protection of the world’s oceans from catastrophic climate change.

Finding that carbon emissions can be considered a sea pollutant, the court said countries have an obligation to take measures to mitigate their effects on oceans.

“Anthropogenic GHG emissions into the atmosphere constitute pollution of the marine environment” under the international treaty UNCLOS, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) ruled in an expert opinion.

The case was brought in September by nine small countries disproportionately affected by climate change, including Antigua and Barbuda, Vanuatu and Tuvalu.

The case is seen as the first big international climate justice case involving the world’s oceans.

“Just a few years — this is all we have before the ocean consumes everything my people built across centuries,” Tuvalu’s Prime Minister Kausea Natano told the court.

Published in Dawn, May 22nd, 2024