How might an International court or tribunal change the attitude and behaviour of states in their regulation of greenhouse gas emissions?
1. Introduction
The consequences of climate change—melting glaciers, ocean acidification, more frequent and intense storms, and droughts threaten people’s daily lives, cause health crises, threaten food security, destroy industries and infrastructure, render borders unstable, and cripple economies.
Greenhouse gas emissions is considered to be on of the contributing factors in climate change which have a significant effect on the environment. Greenhouse gas emission is a ….
One of the impact of the greenhouse effect is the rise of sea level.
Climate …show more content…
Rising sea levels will increase the frequency or likelihood of extreme sea level events and resultant flooding.
The risks from sea level rise are not confined to the coast itself. In many cases flooding may impact areas some distance from the sea for example along estuaries, rivers, lakes and lagoons.
To get a better understanding of the issue, this paper will analyse the case study of a small island state in relation with the greenhouse effect. The relevant case study would be Palau, a small island in the Pacific. Palau is looking for an advisory opinion regarding greenhouse emissions. In the context of Palau, the effect of greenhouse gas emission in question is the rise in sea level. his paper will analyse the following questions
How might an International court or tribunal change the attitude and behaviour of states in their regulation of greenhouse gas emissions?
Section 2 will discuss about how an international court change the attitude of states. I will argue that international court or tribunal provide clarity and guidance through it’s rulings and judgement for the states to act …show more content…
However there are several instances where the advisory opinion were not carried out by states. These examples includes the Namibia Case 1971 ICJ Rep 16 on the legal effects of the terminationof the South African Mandate over South West Africa/Namibia and the Palestinian Wall Advisory Opinion that construction of the Wall is contrary to international law.
In my opinion although the advisory opinion is not legally binding, but it can change the attitude and behaviour of states. This is because the advisory opinion states clarification about the law. And because the body that issued the advisory opinion is an international court, Therefore States will think twice before disregarding the advisory opinion, because it will be likely that if there is a future case that will go to the adversarial proceedings of the tribunal, the same consideration that was used in the advisory opinion will also be taken into account.
Section 3:
Grounds:
The Pacific island nation of Palau announced plans today to seek an advisory opinion from a United Nations court on whether countries have a legal responsibility to ensure that any activities on their territory that emit greenhouse gases do not harm other