Representatives from small island states in the Pacific and Caribbean sit in a courtroom before a session of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in Hamburg, Germany on Tuesday.
A global maritime court has found that greenhouse gases constitute marine pollution, a major breakthrough for small island states threatened by the rise in sea levels caused by global warming. In its first climate-related judgment, the tribunal said emissions from fossil fuels and other planet-warming gases that are absorbed by the oceans count as marine pollution.
"What happened today was that the law and science met together in this tribunal, and both won," said Cheryl Bazard, ambassador to the European Union of the Bahamas, one of nine Caribbean and Pacific island nations that sought the opinion. It also said states' targets for cutting greenhouse emissions must be set objectively based on the best available science and relevant international rules and standards, thus setting the bar higher than the Paris Agreement did.Climate activists and lawyers said the decision could influence two opinions on states' climate obligations that are pending from the Inter-American Court on Human Rights and the International Court of Justice.
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