The United Nations’ highest judicial body ruled Wednesday that nations have a “duty” to prevent environmental harm and are obliged to limit planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions, which come primarily from fossil fuels.
U.N. court rules countries have duty to limit greenhouse emissions
The International Court of Justice was asked to rule on whether nations are obligated under international law to protect the Earth’s climate from planet-warming emissions.
Updated
July 23, 2025
By Chico Harlan
The ruling is nonbinding and won’t force any immediate policy changes. But it will put more pressure on industrialized countries to live up to their pledges. It will also more widely open the door to climate cases around the world, giving leverage to those trying to hold corporations and high-polluting nations to account. Courts across the world could cite the ICJ ruling in their decisions.
The court, based in The Hague and composed of 15 judges, had examined two questions: whether countries are obligated under international law to protect the Earth’s climate from greenhouse gases, and what legal consequences nations might face if they fail.
In reading out the decision, Judge Yuji Iwasawa painted a sweeping picture of the dangers of climate change, saying it crosses borders and “imperils all forms of life.” Still, he cautioned that international law could play an “important but ultimately limited” role. The problem, he said, requires vast political will and wisdom.
But for smaller countries that have grown jaded by the world’s plodding response to climate change, the court ruling was celebrated as a potential turning point.
“It’s a very important course correction,” Vanuatu’s climate envoy, Ralph Regenvanu, said on the steps outside the court.
Vishal Prasad, the director of a Pacific Islands student group that had drawn up the idea of pressing the climate case, said that the “world’s smallest countries have made history. The ICJ’s decision brings us closer to a world where governments can no longer turn a blind eye to their legal responsibilities.”
The court said that people have a right to a “clean, healthy and sustainable environment” under international law.
It also specified that countries don’t get a pass when emissions come from “private actors.” It said granting fossil fuel exploration licenses or providing fossil fuel subsidies could quality as wrongful acts.
The court case exposed some of the most sensitive issues dividing heavily emitting industrialized countries and poorer nations, including small islands, that bear the direct consequences of rising seas, intensifying heat and increasingly ferocious storms.
During about two weeks of testimony in December, countries including the United States, China and Saudi Arabia essentially argued for maintaining the status quo. They said the current international system for dealing with climate change, marked by U.N.-led annual negotiations, was sufficient. Small nations, meanwhile, said that system was failing them and that a court case was their last-ditch effort.
“This is not just a legal question; it is a matter of survival,” Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne told the court.
The decision comes at a moment of flagging political will across the West to address climate change. Governments have pushed back against green measures they view as economically costly. Two years ago, countries pledged to transition away from fossil fuels; instead, many wealthy nations are leading a drilling boom.
The U.S. had presented its oral arguments at the court during the last weeks of the Biden administration. Under President Donald Trump, the U.S. has cut climate research, rolled back regulations on greenhouse gas emissions and pulled out of the Paris climate agreement.
The State Department did not respond to a request for comment.
All the while, vulnerable countries are running up high debts as they try to recover from climate disasters or fortify infrastructure against future events. Last year, wealthier nations pledged to provide at least $300 billion annually by 2035 to help poorer nations — multiples short of what independent estimates say is needed.
Humanity is on track to blow past its goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) compared with preindustrial levels. The 10 hottest years have all come over the past decade.
Even five years ago, frustration with the planet’s trajectory had been mounting. That’s when a group of South Pacific law students drew up an idea with their professor to take the issue of climate change to the U.N. court. They shared the idea with small island governments and drew interest from Vanuatu, which secured backing from donors, hired a law firm and spent years drumming up diplomatic support.
“I thought it was a long shot but that it was definitely worth trying,” Regenvanu said.
The U.N. General Assembly asked the court last year for an opinion in a case that was called “Obligations of States in Respect of Climate Change.”
Delta Merner, a lead scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the court case “won’t change things overnight.” But it could ultimately “reshape the political, legal and even the moral landscape” of how to hold polluters to account.
“We’ve been stuck in this notion that climate action is all voluntary,” she said. “The ICJ reframed the climate crisis as a legal and human rights emergency.”