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Climate modification: little island states hail ocean court victory

A worldwide maritime court found on Tuesday that greenhouse gases make up marine contamination, a significant breakthrough for small island states threatened by the increase in water level caused by international warming.

In its very first climate-related judgment, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea stated emissions from fossil fuels and other planet-warming gases that are taken in by the oceans count as marine contamination.

Its judgment - an advisory viewpoint that should however offer a precedent for

cases elsewhere

- likewise stated nations should exceed the requirements of the landmark 2015 Paris Contract to safeguard the marine environment and the states that depend on it.

What took place today was that the law and science fulfilled together in this tribunal, and both won, said Cheryl Bazard, ambassador to the European Union of the Bahamas, among nine Caribbean and Pacific island nations that looked for the opinion.

Small island countries with scant financial power however acutely vulnerable to climate modification have actually long felt ignored by successive international tops where promises to cut carbon emissions have actually fallen far short of the minimum for limiting the worst results of global warming.

The court said states have a legal commitment to keep an eye on and reduce the emissions that add to environment modification and laid out specific requirements for their environmental effect evaluations.

It also said states' targets for cutting greenhouse emissions need to be set objectively based on the very best available science and pertinent global guidelines and requirements, thus setting the bar higher than the Paris Agreement did.

RULING WILL FORM FUTURE ENVIRONMENT CASES

The ITLOS opinion will notify our future legal and diplomatic work in putting an end to inactiveness that has actually brought us to the brink of a permanent catastrophe, said Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne.

Nikki Reisch, director at the Centre for International Environmental Law, stated: To those that would hide behind the weaknesses of worldwide environment treaties, this opinion makes clear that compliance with the Paris Agreement alone is not enough. Environment activists and lawyers stated the decision could influence 2 viewpoints on states' environment obligations that are pending from the Inter-American Court on Human Rights and the International Court of Justice.

A similar possible precedent was laid down last month, when the European Court of Human being Rights agreed with plaintiffs who argued that Switzerland was breaking their human rights by refraining from doing enough to combat environment warming.

Eselealofa Apinelu, representing the South Pacific island of Tuvalu, said Tuesday's opinion made clear that all states were lawfully bound to protect the marine environment, and other states, from the existential threats of environment change.

He called it an important first step in holding the significant polluters accountable.

However the road to collective global action is far from smooth. China, the world's greatest carbon polluter, had argued in court that the Tribunal did not have general authority to concern advisory opinions, stating these might fragment worldwide law. China's foreign ministry was not immediately offered for comment.

The other countries in the group that brought the case were Palau, Niue, Vanuatu, St.Lucia, St. Vincent and Grenadines and St. Kitts and Nevis.