Small island nations ask U.N. tribunal for climate opinion

Six small island nations want an international court's legal opinion that could force most of the United Nations' 193 member nations to adopt tougher protections for marine environments against the onslaught of climate impacts brought on by human-caused carbon pollution.

The six members of the Commission of Small Island States on Climate Change and International Law, or COSIS – Antigua and Barbuda, Niue, Palau, Saint Lucia, Tuvalu and Vanuatu – submitted the request for an advisory opinion on Monday to a U.N. tribunal in Hamburg, Germany.

They asked the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, or ITLOS, to say what nations must do "to prevent, reduce and control pollution of the marine environment" from climate change and "to protect and preserve the marine environment" from sea level rise, warming and acidification.

The request is based on "the fundamental importance of the oceans as sinks and reservoirs of greenhouse gases and the direct relevance of the marine environment to the adverse effects of climate change on small island states," wrote the two co-chairs of COSIS, prime ministers Gaston Browne of Antigua and Barbuda and Kausea Natano of Tuvalu.

"This is a historic step for small island states, to invoke international law in the effort to ensure that the major polluters take their obligations seriously, to prevent harm to vulnerable states or to compensate them for damage," said Browne. "Our peoples are already feeling the catastrophic consequences of climate change. We cannot continue business as usual."

The tribunal enforces the international legally binding instrument known as the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, or UNCLOS, which seeks to conserve and sustainably use marine biological diversity in waters within the 200 nautical mile (370 kilometer) jurisdiction of coastal nations.

UNCLOS, which took effect in 1994, created three international organizations to manage ocean resources: Hamburg-based ITLOS, the International Seabed Authorit in Kingston, Jamaica, and the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf at U.N. headquarters in New York.

ITLOS said it received the small island nations' request and added it to the U.N. tribunal's list of cases – but the issuance of an advisory opinion isn't guaranteed.

"The tribunal may give an advisory opinion on a legal question if an international agreement related to the purposes of the [Law of the Sea] Convention specifically provides for the submission to the tribunal of a request for such an opinion," the tribunal said.

An opinion would apply to the 168 parties to the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, or UNCLOS. Those include 164 U.N. member nations, plus the European Union and the Cook Islands, Niue and Palestine.

Notably absent from the treaty is the United States, the world's No. 2 emitter of greenhouse gases behind China but by far the largest in terms of cumulative emissions since the industrial era began.

Small islands with low elevations are particularly vulnerable to climate impacts brought on by the build-up of carbon emissions due to fossil fuel burning.

"If humankind does not act with urgency, some of our island nations will disappear under the sea within a generation," said Natano, of Tuvalu. "Protection of the marine environment is a matter of survival. Greenhouse gas emissions should not be treated less seriously than other forms of pollution. If anything, they require even greater urgency and a commitment to respect existing principles of international law."

The U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC has noted that "a sense of urgency is prevalent among small islands in the combating of climate change and in adherence to the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels."

"Small islands," it said, "are increasingly affected by increases in temperature, the growing impacts of tropical cyclones, storm surges, droughts, changing precipitation patterns, sea level rise, coral bleaching and invasive species, all of which are already detectable across both natural and human systems."