By Nikki Reisch, CIEL Climate and Energy Program Director, originally published as an opinion piece in Forward Law Review.
One year after the ICJ’s landmark advisory opinion and on the heels of the UN General Assembly’s subsequent endorsement, global climate governance has reached a turning point.
For decades, climate politics has shaped climate law. International agreements have emerged through compromise, consensus, and lowest-common-denominator negotiations, constrained by the interests of the world’s largest fossil fuel producers. But something is changing: increasingly, the law is reshaping what is politically possible on climate change – and it’s doing so because of the people power behind it.
The clearest sign yet came a year ago this month, in July 2025, when the International Court of Justice (ICJ) unanimously ruled that states have obligations under international law to prevent climate change, protect human rights and the environment from its impacts and remedy its harms. The court clarified that these obligations arise not only from climate treaties, but from multiple, longstanding sources of international law, including human rights law, the law of the sea, customary international law and general principles governing transboundary harm and state responsibility.
Crucially, it confirmed that breaching those climate duties carries legal consequences, including the obligation to repair resulting harm.
On 20 May, the United Nations General Assembly – the same body that requested the ICJ’s opinion by consensus in 2023 – took the next step. In a vote of 141 to eight, with 28 abstentions, a resounding majority of countries adopted a resolution operationalizing the court’s opinion and committing to follow up across the UN system. In doing so, the General Assembly moved the ICJ opinion from the apex of international law to the heart of global policy.
That vote counts not simply because of what it says about climate change, but because of what it says about multilateralism and the role of law in a fractured geopolitical moment. It also reveals something deeper: legal clarity on climate obligations is forcing a political reckoning.
At a time of escalating armed conflict, attacks on international institutions, erosion of democracy and flagrant violations of the law by some of the world’s most powerful states, the resolution represented a rare collective reaffirmation of the importance of international rules and cooperation, and a collective rebuke of those who would undermine them.
The resolution became a litmus test for multilateralism – and the outcome was telling.
Despite sustained efforts to water down or force withdrawal of the resolution, it secured overwhelming support. Vanuatu – the same small island state and long-time climate justice champion that initiated the request for the ICJ advisory opinion, at the urging of Pacific students backed by a global youth movement – introduced the zero draft resolution with a regionally diverse core group in February 2026. In the months that followed, a small bloc of fossil fuel producers and large historical emitters worked aggressively to dilute its content and derail its adoption.
The United States, for example, encouraged the resolution’s withdrawal, balking at its references to reparations and fossil fuels. Some European States, while less vocal in their resistance, also worked during consultations to empty the resolution of any mention of a climate damages registry and omit any express acknowledgment of climate finance obligations. The difference, however, is that Europe eventually came on board. The United States and seven other states that voted against the resolution (Belarus, Iran, Israel, Liberia, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen) did not, while a group of 28 other holdouts abstained.
In its statement of opposition on the floor of the UN General Assembly, the United States sought to challenge the authority of the ICJ’s conclusions and relitigate their merits. In the final hour, Saudi Arabia and allied petro-states pulled out all the procedural stops to delay the vote and weaken the resolution further, through a series of last-minute amendments that would have reopened compromise language, selectively reformulated legal obligations, and blocked follow-up.
Every amendment failed.
Countries from across regions and the political spectrum ultimately rallied to carry the ICJ’s historic ruling forward as a roadmap for climate action, accountability, and cooperation. In the end, the resolution secured 90 co-sponsors. Following extensive consultations, the final text
reflects a carefully balanced outcome that welcomes and affirms the full breadth of the court’s conclusions, including its recognition of the need to transition away from fossil fuels, the continuity of statehood in the face of sea level rise, and the duty to repair climate-related harm.
The resolution ensures that the ICJ opinion does not become a dead letter. It not only urges states to comply with their international climate obligations, but it also provides for follow-up through a report from the UN Secretary General and by keeping the issue on the agenda at the next UN session. Crucially, it does so with the weight of 141 countries behind it.
In the days following the vote, the Gambian government came under intense pressure from local advocates for its abstention. Its Ministry of Environment, Climate Change, and Natural Resources then issued a formal statement clarifying that its position was an error and affirming its support for the resolution and commitment to “climate action, climate resilience, multilateral cooperation, and the principles of climate justice.” The Gambia’s efforts to publicly associate itself with the resolution are testimony to the weight it carries – especially when countries know the world is watching.
The theatrics that unfolded on the General Assembly floor showed petro-powers increasingly on the defensive. Their resistance was revealing. If the resolution were merely symbolic, they would have had little reason to fight so aggressively against it.
So, what are they afraid of? What appears to concern these states is not simply litigation risk, although that risk is real and growing. It’s what this resolution indicates about the broader direction of travel – away from fossil fuel dependence and toward climate justice – and the normative consolidation now taking place across international law.
The ICJ opinion did not emerge in isolation. Together with the advisory opinions of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, it contributes to a rapidly consolidating body of jurisprudence recognizing climate change as a matter of legal obligation, due diligence, human rights protection, and accountability.
Importantly, this legal clarification is not only shaping court decisions. It is reshaping politics itself.
The law reflects expected standards of conduct. It reinforces social understandings of what is acceptable, fair, and just. When the world’s highest court publicly and unanimously clarifies what international law requires in relation to climate change – and what consequences may follow when states flout those duties – it changes the political terrain of climate debates.
That shift is already visible.
The court put countries on notice: failure to rein in fossil fuel production, consumption, licensing, and subsidies may constitute an internationally wrongful act and require full reparation. Those that continue to authorize, subsidize and expand fossil fuel production in the face of the court’s stark warning and despite overwhelming scientific evidence of harm are hard-pressed to justify it. As state duties to regulate climate-destructive conduct become clearer, companies face increasing pressure to align their operations with those legal standards of care – as illustrated by a French court’s decision last month in a case against TotalEnergies – and governments find stronger grounds to defend their climate action against investor claims.
The opinion’s confirmation that climate duties are owed to the international community as a whole and require states to cooperate effectively and in good faith is not only influencing the climate talks under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and ongoing negotiations of a global plastics treaty. It is also driving complementary initiatives to create new agreements or foster other forms of collective action, such as the First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels held in Santa Marta, Colombia in April – to be followed by a second in Tuvalu – and the growing momentum behind the development of a legally binding Fossil Fuel Treaty.
The myriad applications of the advisory opinion, across different bodies of law and decision-making spaces, reflect just how pervasive the climate crisis is and just how persistent the demands for climate justice are. The widening judicial consensus on the imperative to address climate change at its primary source – fossil fuels – is making climate action and accountability inescapable. That evolution matters because politics has long delayed responsibility.
The ICJ opinion does not eliminate politics from climate governance, nor does it magically solve the climate crisis. Powerful hold-outs persist in their efforts to preserve the fossil fuel status quo and resist responsibility for mounting harms. The General Assembly debate itself was proof of how obstructive petro-politics remain. But the vote also demonstrated something else: law can provide common points of reference and unifying standards even in deeply polarised political contexts. And each legal and political affirmation further erodes the legitimacy of delay.
None of this is inevitable. Law is not intrinsically a force for justice. It is too often an instrument of oppression designed or enforced to reify inequalities and protect the status quo. Why, then, can the law do otherwise here? Because of the movement around it that has raised the ambition, drawn the red lines, and refused to give up. That people’s movement is what gives the law power to shift what is politically possible. In the hands of affected communities, wielded by climate-vulnerable countries and in service of humanity’s common interests, law is recentering people and justice in climate politics. Thanks to the cross-border, cross-generational movement behind the ICJ opinion and the resolution, the law is becoming a vehicle for the global majority to reclaim power in climate governance.
Pacific students and climate-vulnerable states did not push for an advisory opinion from the world’s highest court simply for it to “sit on a shelf”. They sought to shift the terrain of international climate action: away from a framework dominated by political discretion and aspiration, and toward one increasingly shaped by legal obligation and accountability.
The General Assembly vote suggests they are succeeding.