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Vanuatu
Climate Actions Climate Change UN Special Rapporteur Vanuatu

Special Rapporteur on climate change to visit Vanuatu

November 25, 2024 0

GENEVA – The UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights in the context of climate change, Elisa Morgera, will visit Vanuatu from 27 November to 5 December 2024.

Morgera will focus on the adverse effects of sudden and slow onset climate events on human rights, the scope and extent of international climate cooperation and their impacts on human rights, needs for international technical assistance and finance, the role of the business community, and the integration of gender and intersectional perspectives in climate policies and implementation.

The expert will travel to Port Vila and other parts of Efate island, as well as the islands of Pele, Nguna and Tanna, to meet communities affected by climate change. She will also meet Government officials and representatives from civil society.

Morgera will hold a press conference in Port Vila on 5 December at 2 pm local time at the UN Joint Presence Office at the Vanuatu Reserve Bank Building. Access is strictly limited to journalists.

The Special Rapporteur will present her report to the UN Human Rights Council in July 2025.

Ms. Elisa Morgera is the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights in the context of climate change.

The Special Rapporteurs are part of what is known as the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council. Special Procedures, the largest body of independent experts in the UN Human Rights system, is the general name of the Council's independent fact-finding and monitoring mechanisms that address either specific country situations or thematic issues in all parts of the world. Special Procedures' experts work on a voluntary basis; they are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work. They are independent from any government or organization and serve in their individual capacity.

For more information and media requests, please contact Christel Mobech (mobech@un.org)

For media enquiries regarding other UN independent experts, please Dharisha Indraguptha dharisha.indraguptha@un.org) or John Newland (john.newland@un.org).

Follow news related to the UN’s independent human rights experts on Twitter @UN_SPExperts. 

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scientist
Climate Change politician scientist

Politicians not ambitious enough to save nature, say scientists

November 02, 2024 0
Scientists say there has been an alarming lack of progress in saving nature as the UN biodiversity summit, COP 16, draws to a close.

The scale of political ambition has not risen to the challenge of reducing the destruction of nature that costs the economy billions, said one leading expert.

Representatives of 196 countries have been meeting in Cali, Colombia, to agree on how to halt nature decline by 2030.

The biodiversity summit is separate from the more well-known COP climate summit, which is set to take place in Baku later this month.

Countries were meant to come to the table with a detailed plan on how they intended to meet biodiversity targets at home, but most missed the deadline.

However, plans were agreed to raise money for conservation through making companies pay for using genetic resources from nature.

The summit comes as one million species face extinction and nature is declining at rates unprecedented in human history.

We are stuck in a "vicious cycle where economic woes reduce political focus on the environment" while the destruction of nature costs the economy billions, said Tom Oliver, professor of biodiversity at the University of Reading.

Until we have world leaders with the wisdom and courage to put nature as a top political priority then nature-related risks will continue to escalate,” he told BBC News.

The UN biodiversity summit, COP 16, was the first chance to take stock of progress towards a landmark deal to restore nature agreed in 2022.

However, scientists lamented the pace of progress. Nathalie Seddon, professor of biodiversity at the University of Oxford, said while some meaningful progress was made, the overarching picture was "undoubtedly deeply concerning".

"Biodiversity still takes a back seat to climate action - even though the science speaks strongly to the need for fully coordinated approaches," she said.

What was agreed at the summit?
An agreement was reached that companies profiting from nature's genetic data should pay towards its protection through a global fund
The fund, to be known as the Cali fund after the COP16 host city, will be financed with payments from companies who make use of genetic information from living things
The role of Indigenous Peoples as vital stewards of nature was officially recognised through the setting up of a permanent body to represent their interests
The next biodiversity summit will take place in 2026, with time running out for solutions. Astrid Schomaker, executive secretary of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, said through such gatherings governments, NGOs and scientists could share knowledge and resources.

"This collective spirit is critical as we work to develop and implement effective policies to confront the complex and interconnected crises facing our planet’s ecosystems," she said.

Commenting on the talks, the renowned scientist, Dr Jane Goodall, said our future is "ultimately doomed" if we don't address biodiversity loss.

She told BBC News: "We have to take action too. We can't only blame the government and big corporations, although a huge part of the blame lies on them."

Additional reporting by Victoria Gill
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corruption
Carbon Credits Climate Change corruption

Ex-carbon offsetting boss charged in New York with multimillion-dollar fraud

October 04, 2024 0
Kenneth Newcombe, formerly CEO of C-Quest Capital, indicted over allegations of carbon credit manipulation

Patrick Greenfield Fri 4 Oct 2024 06.00 BST

A former carbon offsetting executive has been charged with fraud by US federal authorities, who allege that he helped to manipulate data from projects in rural Africa and Asia to fraudulently obtain carbon credits worth tens of millions of dollars.

Kenneth Newcombe, former CEO of C-Quest Capital LLC and a leading figure in the offsetting industry, was indicted on Wednesday in New York with commodities and wire fraud.

Prosecutors alleged he was part of a multi-year scheme that manipulated information on the impact of cooking stove projects in Africa and south-east Asia to make them appear far more successful at reducing emissions than they were in reality, also using the figures to attract investment of more than $100m in C-Quest.

From 2007 to December 2023, the 77-year-old was a board member of Verra, the world’s leading certifier of carbon offsets, and he also worked at the World Bank and Goldman Sachs at different times. He faces up to 20 years in prison if he is convicted of the most serious charges. He denies all allegations against him.

A spokesperson for Newcombe told Bloomberg that their client was dying of cancer. “He is confident that if he lives to see a jury hear this case, that jury will reject these false charges and return his good name to him,” the spokesperson said.

Cooking stove projects are one of the most popular carbon offsetting schemes, theoretically generating emissions reductions by swapping smoky fuels such as wood, paraffin or kerosene with cleaner alternatives.

By changing fuels, they can have major benefits: improving air quality, reducing the amount of time people spend collecting wood and slowing the loss of the world’s forests. But studies have raised widespread concerns about their claimed environmental impact, finding that schemes are overstating their effect by an average of 1,000%.

Shell and BP have both invested in C-Quest and are among several leading firms that have bought carbon credits from the firm.

Newcombe stepped down as CEO of C-Quest in February this year. In June, the new management of C-Quest announced that they had reported their former CEO to US authorities for his role in allegedly faking emissions data to generate millions of worthless carbon credits.

Following the announcement Verra said it was suspending the 27 projects implicated in the allegations and that it would be working with C-Quest to cancel the overissued credits as quickly as possible. Its statement at the time added: “Verra and the voluntary carbon market (VCM) as a whole are built on trust and integrity. We take any accusation of impropriety that undermines that trust very seriously.”

On Wednesday, US authorities said they would not be pursuing charges against C-Quest due to its open and timely disclosure of the alleged wrongdoing.

Prosecutors also charged Tridip Goswami, former head of C-Quest’s carbon and sustainability accounting team, with fraud. He could not be immediately reached for comment. Former chief operating officer Jason Steele has pleaded guilty to charges and is cooperating with the US government, the announcement said.

US attorney Damian Williams said: “As alleged, Kenneth Newcombe and Tridip Goswami, among others, engaged in a multi-year scheme to fraudulently obtain carbon credits by using manipulated and misleading data. They then sold those credits to unsuspecting buyers in the multi-billion-dollar global market for carbon credits.”







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Vanuatu
Climate Change indigenous knowledge Vanuatu

Weather magic’ and wind lore: the push to preserve ancient knowledge in Vanuatu

September 07, 2024 0
Talking dictionaries’ among the tools used by researchers to document languages and record Indigenous environmental knowledge

Jon Letman
Fri 6 Sep 2024 21.00 BST

Joe Natuman watches for falling leaves and new shoots on trees as a sign it’s time to garden. Then, when a southern wind begins to blow in his small village in Vanuatu’s Tafea province, he is the first to plant yams. Soon, others will follow his lead.

Like his forefathers, Natuman is a tupunus, meaning he was born into a lineage that is trained to develop an understanding of how natural forces impact agriculture and wellbeing. As a tupunus, Natuman is respected for his knowledge and ability to identify and use hundreds of plant species and special inherited stones to practise “weather magic”. He also senses winds and uses weather to help his community.

But in Vanuatu, the traditional practice is at risk of fading away. Part of the problem is a loss of local languages and the knowledge that is stored with them. Young people increasingly attend school away from their village and spend less time learning from elders. At the same time, the environment is changing as once easily-found plants become more scarce due to cattle farming, forest degradation and the impact of climate change.


Now, efforts are under way to preserve that knowledge. Botanists and academics in the US and elsewhere are working with communities in Vanuatu to study and record information about the natural diversity in Tafea province, where Natuman lives. They are also researching and documenting the linguistic diversity of the area.

“Loss of this information reduces a community’s ability to cope with the rapid pace of climate change, compromising traditional livelihoods,” say Mike Balick and Greg Plunkett, botanists leading the research in Tafea.

Keeping languages alive

Language is central to the preservation of Indigenous environmental knowledge. Vanuatu has an estimated 138 languages, some only spoken by small groups.

K David Harrison is a professor at the Centre for Environmental Intelligence at Vin University in Vietnam and specialises in endangered languages. Since 2015, Harrison has been working with botanists at the New York Botanical Garden and others to carry out nature surveys in Vanuatu, including the study of nine local languages. Some are spoken by as few as 900 people but have richly nuanced vocabularies describing the natural and spiritual worlds. Many of the concepts are difficult or impossible to translate into English, because equivalents don’t exist.

Working with local communities, Harrison has created eight talking dictionaries that have proved transformative for speakers of the mostly unwritten languages. Their work has continued in recent years, and the researchers have published studies on the links between Indigenous language and environmental knowledge and how that can be used to benefit communities.


‘Tools for survival’

Harrison has also been studying “wind lore” in Vanuatu. It includes the use of “wind compasses” used for wayfinding, which has been observed and documented for centuries. These are not physical objects but rather systems used for naming specific winds. A tupunus will be able to sense how the direction and strength of a wind may indicate the presence of a particular fish species, or favourable crop planting conditions.

Across the Pacific, wind lore and its role in agriculture has not been well documented, Harrison says. In 2017, he travelled to Tafea to record systems of naming and understanding winds and how communities used this knowledge.


While some elders had memorised wind lore, he says, many young people had only fragmented knowledge of what he calls “sophisticated tools for survival”.

Presley Dovo, senior conservation officer with Vanuatu’s Department of Forests, has been working with Harrison and the other researchers to document and record wind knowledge since 2015. “The winds play a vital role in providing information to the people,” Dovo says.

Increasingly inconsistent winds can cause massive disruptions to communities, infrastructure and crops, Dovo adds. He notes that Vanuatu is especially vulnerable to climate and environmental disasters, pointing to devastating back-to-back cyclones in 2023.

Harrison likens the environmental intelligence of Vanuatu to a flexible instrument, able to detect subtle changes. He says it is vital to document and preserve languages and understanding of the environment otherwise unknown to the rest of the world.

“Pacific Island nations can really be seen as a model for Indigenous futures and how Indigenous cultures are going to not only revitalise themselves but make a significant contribution to all of humanity in helping us understand what is happening with the planet.”

Back in Tafea, as the day draws to a close, Natuman sits for an interview over a mobile phone with his son, wife and several curious community members watching from behind.

When the sun starts to go down, Natuman walks to his village nakamal – a sacred gathering place for ceremonies and kava drinking. There, speaking through an interpreter, Natuman extends an invitation to come drink kava and then says goodbye. “I’m going now to talk to my ancestors.”

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USA
Climate Change Republican USA

Nearly 15% of Americans don’t believe climate change is real, study finds

February 14, 2024 0
Denialism highest in central and southern US, with Republican voters less likely to believe in climate science

Aliya Uteuova, The Guardian 
Wed 14 Feb 2024 18.47 GMT
Nearly 15% of Americans don’t believe climate change is real, a new study out of the University of Michigan reveals – shedding light on the highly polarized attitude toward global warming.

Additionally, denialism is highest in the central and southern US, with Republican voters found less likely to believe in climate science.

Using artificial intelligence, researchers analyzed over 7.4m tweets posted by roughly 1.3 million people on the social media platform X (previously Twitter) between 2017 and 2019. The social media posts were geocoded, and classified as “for” or “against” climate change using a large language model, a type of artificial intelligence developed by OpenAI.

“Over half of the tweets we looked at simply denied that climate change was real, that it was a hoax,” said Joshua Newell, co-author of the study and professor of environment and sustainability at the University of Michigan. “It wasn’t surprising but it was disappointing, I would hope that more and more Americans would believe in climate change and the importance of addressing it.”

Donald Trump emerged as one of the most influential figures among climate change deniers. His tweets around a cold snap in Texas in December 2017, as well as his missives rejecting the 2018 IPCC report released at the Cop24 UN conference, were some of his most engaged social media posts among climate change deniers.

“Public figures such as Trump are highly influential,” Newell said, “when they use these events to trigger disbelief in climate change among social media users.
The findings are consistent with similar studies, such as the recent survey out of Yale University which estimates that as of 2023, 16% of Americans do not believe in climate change (about 49 million people).

Acceptance and belief in global warming is most prevalent along the west and east coasts, correlating with those regions’ high rates of Democratic voters. Still, clusters of denialism exist within blue states, like in the case of Shasta county, California. There, disbelief in climate change is as high as 52%, but statewide, less than 12% of California’s population does not believe in global warming.

“It comports with my understanding that there is a small but very vocal and active minority of the public that still denies the overwhelming evidence of human-caused warming,” said Michael Mann, climatologist and geophysicist at the University of Pennsylvania, about the study.

Last week, Mann was awarded $1m in a defamation lawsuit against conservative writers who called his pioneering climate change research “fraudulent”, comparing it to the work of a convicted child molester. In his book The New Climate War, Mann argues that scientists have to rebut the misinformation and disinformation promoted on social media by bad actors, “not because we’re going to win them over, their ideological heels are dug in, but because they are infecting the entire social media space with myths, falsehoods and toxic anti-scientific sentiment”, Mann said.


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global warming
Climate Actions Climate Change COP28 global warming

World stands on frontline of disaster at Cop28, says UN climate chief

November 25, 2023 0

A fire in Gennadi, on the Greek island of Rhodes, in July. Photograph: Spyros Bakalis/AFP/Getty Images

World leaders must “stop dawdling and start doing” on carbon emission cuts, as rapidly rising temperatures this year have put everyone on the frontline of disaster, the UN’s top climate official has warned.

No country could think itself immune from catastrophe, said Simon Stiell, who will oversee the crucial Cop28 climate summit that begins next week. Scores of world leaders will arrive in Dubai for tense talks on how to tackle the crisis.

“We’re used to talking about protecting people on the far-flung frontlines. We’re now at the point where we’re all on the frontline,” said Stiell, speaking exclusively to the Guardian before the summit. “Yet most governments are still strolling when they need to be sprinting.”

Global temperatures have broken new records in recent months, making this year the hottest on record, and perilously close to the threshold of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels that countries have agreed to hold to. Temperatures are now heading for a “hellish” 3C increase, unless urgent and drastic action is taken, but greenhouse gas emissions have continued to rise.

Stiell said it was still possible to cut greenhouse gas emissions enough to stay within the crucial limit, but that further delay would be dangerous.

“Every year of the baby steps we’ve been taking up to this point means that we need to be taking … bigger leaps with each following year if we are to stay in this race,” he said. “The science is absolutely clear.”

The fortnight-long Cop28 talks will start this Thursday in Dubai, hosted by the United Arab Emirates, a major oil and gas-producing country. Scores of world leaders, senior ministers and officials from 198 countries will be in attendance, along with an estimated 70,000 delegates, making it the biggest annual conference of the parties (Cop) yet held under the 1992 UN framework convention on climate change.

The UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, is expected to attend, and King Charles will give the opening speech, along with the UN secretary general, António Guterres, and the UAE president, Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan. The pope will also be there, the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, and an invitation has been extended to Bashar al-Assad, the president of Syria.

The presidents of the world’s two biggest greenhouse gas emitters, Joe Biden of the US and Xi Jinping of China, are not expected to attend, but their envoys John Kerry and Xie Zhenhua have signalled their close cooperation before the talks.

Simon Stiell. Photograph: Simon Maina/AFP/Getty Images
Sultan Al Jaber, the chief of the UAE national oil company, Adnoc, will preside over the talks. Al Jaber has come under fierce criticism from green campaigners for his dual role, but Stiell said this was “a distraction”.

“This is not the first Cop to be hosted by a fossil fuel producing nation and it certainly won’t be the last. Every country, even those that are major oil producers, have their role to play,” he said. “What’s important are the messages and the signals that the incoming president is giving, and they speak to the need for urgent action and a focus on the how – how do we speed up the transition to a new decarbonised world.”

Fossil fuel executives are likely to be out in force at the summit, as they have been an increasing presence at Cops in recent years.

Stiell said: “It’s important that we recognise that the fossil fuel industry has to be part of the solution. We know where the problems lie. But in order to progress the conversation from what needs to be done to how it needs to be done, the fossil fuel industry has to be part of the conversation.”

Source: The Guardian

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Vanuatu Prime Minister
Climate Change Climate Justice ICJ Ralph Regenvanu Vanuatu Vanuatu Foreign Minister Vanuatu Prime Minister

‘Beginning of a new era’: Pacific islanders hail UN vote on climate justice

March 31, 2023 0

Resolution asks ICJ to clarify countries’ obligations to fight climate change and the consequences they should face for inaction

Members of Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change at a protest during the COP27 UN summit in Egypt. The group has celebrated the passing of a UN resolution calling for legal clarification of state obligations on climate. Photograph: Nariman El-Mofty/AP

A group of Pacific Island students who were instrumental in pushing a UN resolution that should make it easier to hold polluting countries legally accountable for failure to act on the climate crisis have greeted its adoption as historic.

“Young people across the world will recall the day when we were able to get the world’s highest court, the international court of justice, to bring its voice to the climate justice fight,” said Solomon Yeo, campaign director of Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change (PISFCC), who is from Solomon Islands.

The resolution calls for the international court of justice (ICJ) to issue an opinion clarifying nations’ obligations to tackle the climate crisis and the consequences they should face for inaction.

“I don’t want to show a picture to my child one day of my island. I want my child to be able to experience the same environment and the same culture that I grew up in,” said Cynthia Houniuhi, also of Solomon Islands and who is president of PISFCC. “The environment that sustains us is disintegrating before our eyes.”

Frustrated by the world’s lack of action on climate change, law students in eight Pacific island nations founded PISFCC in 2019 and launched their campaign to persuade their leaders to take the resolution to the UN’s highest court.

Spearheaded by Vanuatu, Pacific nations soon took up the law students’ call.

Pacific Island nations are at risk of rising seas engulfing swathes of the islands. Scientists say both extreme weather and sea levels have worsened because of climate change caused by the burning of fossil fuels. The resolution asks the court to pay particular attention to the harm endured by small island states.

Vanuatu Prime Minister Ishmael Kalsakau greeted the resolution as “a win for climate justice of epic proportions.”

“Today’s historic resolution is the beginning of a new era in multilateral climate cooperation, one that is more fully focused on upholding the rule of international law and an era that places human rights and intergenerational equity at the forefront of climate decision-making,” he said.

UN secretary general António Guterres said he hoped the opinion, when issued, would encourage nations “to take the bolder and stronger climate action that our world so desperately needs”.

While the opinion from the ICJ will not be binding, it will encourage states “to actually go back and look at what they haven’t been doing and what they need to do” to address the climate emergency, said Nilufer Oral, director at the Center for International Law at the University of Singapore.

The court has other power it can bring to bear, Christopher Bartlett, climate diplomacy manager for the government of Vanuatu, explained. The court can reference other international legal instruments, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, and those do have the force of law for the countries that have ratified them.

“The international court of justice is the only legal authority that has a mandate to look at all of international law. While the advisory opinion itself is not binding, the laws upon which the advisory opinion will be speaking absolutely are legally binding and immediately applicable to states,” said Bartlett.

Bartlett said that some of the questions the ICJ will ask include: what harm to the climate has been done? Should states be forced to take certain actions? And is financial support a legal consequence of causing harm?

The resolution now goes to the court.

Countries have agreed to aim to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius with an upper limit of 2 degrees Celsius back in 2015 as part of the Paris Agreement. The agreement asks countries to submit their plans to curb greenhouse gases to the UN and regularly revise and update those plans.

Clarifying those obligations for states, as well as other promises to protect biodiversity and strengthen domestic policies are the main aims of the advisory opinion, said Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu’s climate change minister.

“We are also clear eyed that existing international frameworks have significant gaps,” he said, adding that the opinion could push for stronger legal measures like negotiating a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty or criminalising “climate destroying activities”. lionaire owner, meaning we can fearlessly chase the truth and report it with integrity. 2023 will be no different; we will work with trademark determination and passion to bring you journalism that’s always free from commercial or political interference. No one edits our editor or diverts our attention from what’s most important. 

With your support, we’ll continue to keep Guardian journalism open and free for everyone to read. When access to information is made equal, greater numbers of people can understand global events and their impact on people and communities. Together, we can demand better from the powerful and fight for democracy.


Pacific projectPacific islands

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Vanuatu Foreign Minister
Australia China Climate Change global warming United States Vanuatu Vanuatu Foreign Minister

Australia joins Vanuatu's campaign to push for consequences for climate-harming countries through the ICJ

March 31, 2023 0

 By foreign affairs reporter Stephen Dziedzic

Posted , updated 
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Vanuatu
Alatoi Ishmael Kalsakau Climate Change climate law ICJ Ralph Regenvanu UN General Assembly Vanuatu

How a small island got world’s highest court to take on climate justice

March 30, 2023 0

By

Updated March 29, 2023 at 3:04 p.m. EDT|Published March 29, 2023 at 11:48 a.m. EDT

An uprooted tree blocks a road after Cyclone Judy made landfall in 
Port Vila, Vanuatu. (Jean-Baptiste Jeangene Vilmer/AFP/Getty Images)

The small Pacific island nation of Vanuatu won a major victory to advance international climate law Wednesday after it persuaded the U.N. General Assembly to ask the world’s highest international court to rule on the obligations of countries to address climate change.

The request for an advisory ruling from the International Court of Justice is expected to clarify the legal obligations of countries to address climate change — and to create a path for them to be sued if they fail to do so. The U.N. effort was a significant outcome for Vanuatu, an archipelago nation of 320,000 people that is suffering from climate-change-driven natural disasters. In recent weeks, it was hit by two Category 4 cyclones, the severity of which its leaders blamed on global warming. Thousands of people are still living in shelters.

The country has used its moral authority and ability to stage action at the United Nations to achieve outsize results on climate issues. The U.N. General Assembly approved the measure by acclamation, with neither the United States nor China standing in the way of the effort despite uncertainty in advance whether they would seek a formal up-or-down vote.

 Wednesday’s decision was also a measure of how much global attitudes about the urgency of addressing climate change have shifted in recent years. A similar effort in 2011 by two other island nations, Palau and the Marshall Islands, failed at the United Nations. This time, Vanuatu obtained co-sponsorship from more than 120 countries, including Britain, France, Germany and other industrialized nations with a long history of high emissions.

“It is a matter of basic survival for us,” Vanuatu Climate Change Minister Ralph Regenvanu said in an interview. “We can’t do anything economically and politically because we don’t have any power. What we can use is our sovereignty as a United Nations member state.”
 

What’s an advisory opinion?

The International Court of Justice, which is based in The Hague, typically rules on disputes between countries. But it also issues advisory opinions that interpret how existing international agreements apply to new issues. Those opinions are not binding on national courts, but they can be used to pressure governments and courtrooms and to create pathways for future lawsuits.
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“An opinion would assist the General Assembly, the U.N. and member states to take the bolder and stronger climate action that our world so desperately needs,” U.N. Secretary General António Guterres told the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday ahead of the decision.

“It could also guide the actions and conduct of states in their relations with each other, as well as towards their own citizens,” he said. 

Having the International Court of Justice weigh in creates a “pretty clear pathway to recognizing that states have a duty not only not to violate fundamental human rights, but states have a duty to avoid transboundary harm through activities under their control,” said Carroll Muffett, president of the Center for International Environmental Law, a D.C.-based nonprofit that works to use international law to address ecological issues.

He compared an advisory ruling to consulting a lawyer while being engaged in behavior that falls in a legal gray zone.

“It’s like when you send a note to your lawyer, and you get a lawyer’s note back saying what you’re doing is illegal,” he said. “It puts you on notice that you could be held accountable for your actions.”

“It is hard to overstate the significance of this development as a matter of international law,” he added.
Vanuatu’s campaign

As Vanuatu gained support for the U.N. action, it was careful to try to build consensus, with its leaders saying they are not suing anyone nor seeking to create new international obligations. Instead, they say, they are seeking to clarify how preexisting international agreements apply to climate change.

“We believe the clarity it will bring can greatly benefit our efforts to address the climate crisis, and could further bolster global and multilateral cooperation,” Vanuatu Prime Minister Alatoi Ishmael Kalsakau told the assembly.

Neither the United States, which is the world’s largest historical emitter, nor China — which is soon poised to overtake the United States on that count — opposed the measure. The two superpowers have been competing for influence among Pacific island nations as they seek to project power across that ocean, giving the small countries outsize leverage despite their minuscule economies and populations.

But even as the United States stood aside and allowed the referral to be approved without objection, a U.S. diplomat also said the Biden administration believes diplomacy is a better way to achieve action on climate issues than inside a courtroom.

“Launching a judicial process, especially given the broad scope of the questions, will likely accentuate disagreements and not be conducive to advancing our ongoing diplomatic and other processes. In light of these concerns, the United States disagrees that this initiative is the best approach for achieving our shared goals,” diplomat Nicholas Hill told the General Assembly after the measure was approved, speaking on behalf of the State Department.

Vanuatu’s policymakers said they had tried to craft their work in a way that would win broad acceptance.

“We have deliberately tried to make this as noncontentious as possible,” Regenvanu said. “Once we get the question before the court, then the process of submissions begins, and there might be a slight change of tactic there. Because obviously we want the highest level ambition in that opinion.”



The effort began four years ago in a classroom at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji. Law students there decided that an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice could be an effective tool to advance climate justice. They worked to convince their governments to follow suit.

Vanuatu has also promoted a global fossil fuel nonproliferation treaty, advocating a total phaseout of oil, coal and gas as quickly as possible. And it has been a leader on international efforts to create a system to compensate the worst-hit countries for “loss and damage” from climate change.

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com

 
 
 
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Vanuatu
Climate Change Tropical Cyclone Vanuatu

Vanuatu Braces for Another Cyclone Following Judy’s Devastation

March 08, 2023 0

By Anita Roberts Mar 3, 2023, Vanuatu Daily Post


Just one day after being battered by Tropical Cyclone (TC) Judy, Vanuatu is bracing itself for a second cyclone which is intensifying with the possibility of developing into a category 3 system.


Tropical Cyclone (TC) Kevin will bring more destruction while the people are still cleaning-up after category 3 TC Judy. Some homes have not been rebuilt and the government is yet to assess the widespread damage.


Warnings have already been issued for strong winds, heavy rainfalls and rough swells before the occurrence of TC Kevin.


The severe weather has triggered suspension of both domestic and international flights while ships, boats and small fishing rafts are advised not to go out to sea.


Some essential services like the banks will be temporarily closed today. Disruptions to electricity and telecommunication services are possible and government workers will resume work once the situation is declared all clear.


As of yesterday night, a Red Alert has been issued for SANMA, MALAMPA and PENAMA Provinces, Yellow Alert for TORBA and SHEFA.


Originated south of Solomon Islands, TC Kevin was upgraded to category 2 yesterday. As of yesterday night, it was positioned about 330km west of Santo and 430km west northwest of Malekula.


According to the Manager of the Weather Forecast Section, Fred Jockley, the cyclone will pass near the central and southern parts of Vanuatu.


It is likely the system will develop into a category 2 system and will further strengthen into a category 3 system, he said. He added that the system is expected to make landfall on Tanna on Saturday, tomorrow.


The cyclone is expected to leave Vanuatu water by tomorrow.


According to Weather Forecast Manager Jockley, this is not the first time for them to issue warnings for two systems in Vanuatu’s area of responsibility simultaneously.


People are advised to take precautions and follow advices from the Vanuatu Meteorology and Geo-Hazards Department (VMGD) and the National Disaster Management Office (NDMO) to keep safe.


Meanwhile, the extent of the damage from the two systems will be known once the government make a full assessment. Based on initial reports, there is widespread damage to buildings, homes and crops in affected areas. 






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