Overview

• The ICJ ruled that international climate treaties impose binding legal obligations on states to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
• The court declared greenhouse gas emissions unequivocally human-caused and an urgent existential threat to the planet.
• It determined that states’ failure to meet these obligations constitutes an internationally wrongful act that may incur reparations.
• The advisory opinion recognizes a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment as a fundamental human right integral to other civil and political rights.
• The ruling is now entering international and domestic legal processes and is informing climate policymaking debates worldwide.