The Sabin Climate Law Center's Dr. Maria Antonia Tigre Discusses the ICJ's Recent Climate Advisory Opinion

On July 23rd the United Nations’ International Court of Justice (ICJ) announced its highly-anticipated climate advisory opinion. The opinion represents a watershed moment because the court ruled states or countries are accountable for contributing to anthropogenic warming or for their GHG emissions. Consequently, the ICJ concluded countries are legally obligated to ensure the climate is protected from GHG emission, if not, countries - and private actors such as healthcare - can be held culpable for failing to do so. Though an advisory opinion the ICJ ruling has significant implications for US healthcare largely because US healthcare annually accounts for a massive amount of GHG emissions at over 600 MMT of CO2e and the federal government has neither enacted legislation nor promulgated regulations that require healthcare mitigate its GHG emissions. Not surprisingly, healthcare has ignored the 2023 UN resolution that requested the ICJ opinion and now the opinion.

The ICJ opinion is at: https://www.icj-cij.org/case/187/advisory-opinions

The Columbia University Sabin Center’s Climate Change Law Blog ICJ symposium writings are at: https://blogs.law.columbia.edu/climatechange/category/blog-series/