The Pacific has won a historic climate case before the world’s highest court. They now want countries to act.

In January 2004, Cyclone Heta struck the coast of the island nation of Niue, uprooting trees and flooding homes with 184 mile-per-hour winds and 164-foot waves. As dawn approached, after an intense night, the winds calmed and Coral Pasisi began to worry about its neighbors. The storm had been more violent than expected: a tree had fallen on his roof and the water was up to his ankles. It was 4 a.m. when she started to hit the road to check on her community.

Usually, when Pasisi walked down the hill on the west coast of the island, she would see the national museum with its familiar outdoor amphitheater where she had seen many traditional dance performances. But instead there was a clear view of the ocean. The museum had disappeared.

“There was nothing left,” Pasisi said. “It looked like a war zone.”

Also gone are the island’s only hospital, its courthouse and its fuel depot. Two people died on the island, which was then home to just over 1,700 residents, and damage was estimated at nearly US$48 million, or five times the country’s annual gross domestic product. Two decades after the storm, the memory of the missing museum still makes her cry.

“This is an unimaginable, irreparable and irreplaceable non-economic loss. A loss that cannot be remedied or restored,” Pasisi told the International Court of Justice, or ICJ, in The Hague in December 2024. “A loss that has deprived our children of their future inherent rights to traditional knowledge and cultural identity.”

Pasisi’s testimony is among more than 100 that could help the ICJ issue a historic advisory opinion that every nation on earth has a legal obligation to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Today, Pasisi is one of many indigenous Pacific advocates traveling to Brazil to attend COP30 – the annual intergovernmental gathering of UN member states – to try to ensure world leaders adhere to the decision.

“It’s a different vision of clarity that we all have now as COP30 approaches,” said Pasisi, who is now director of climate change and sustainability at the Pacific Community (SPC), an international development organization based in New Caledonia and made up of Pacific nations and territories as well as global partners like the United States. She and her fellow Pasifika advocates no longer just assert that leaders have an ethical responsibility to save the planet, she said. “There’s nothing like a legal opinion to show which side of the law you should be on. »

Pacific advocates at COP30 are demanding that world leaders follow the ICJ ruling by phasing out fossil fuels and funding rebuilding projects after climate catastrophe. Many also call for indigenous peoples and traditional ecological knowledge to be included in climate decision-making and oppose efforts to sacrifice the Pacific seabed for lucrative transitional mining. They argue that the next COP should be held in Australia, where they hope to raise awareness of the impact of climate change on their lands and waters.

But even though the ICJ ruling clarifies international law, it is a non-binding advisory opinion and nations can flout its guidelines. However, failure to comply with this ruling would undermine the Court and the global system of international law while further worsening the climate crisis. Considering that the case before the ICJ was originally brought by law students at the University of the South Pacific in Vanuatu, this makes this COP one of the most important in the last 30 years for Pacific defenders.

“Our homes, our cultures and our ways of life are on the front lines of a crisis that we did not cause,” said Belyndar Rikimani, of the Solomon Islands and one of the founders of the group of Vanuatu students who pushed for success in the ICJ climate decision. “Our goal is to remind negotiators that behind every political decision there are real people and real lives at risk. »

Sindra Sharma, head of international policy at the Pacific Islands Climate Action Network, wants COP30 negotiations to force participating countries to revise their national emissions targets to ensure global warming does not exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius. “We approach this COP now for the first time in the history of COPs armed with what (the ICJ) has given us, which is a tool of hope and ambition,” she said. “We’re really going to use this tool to make sure we can come out of this with the justice needed for people and the rest of the ecosystems.”

Better accountability is essential, Pasisi agreed, as is more money to prepare for and recover from climate impacts. When Niue sought help from global climate finance organizations to help it rebuild after the 2004 cyclone, its leaders were told that their infrastructure rebuilding did not meet grant criteria. The community would have qualified if they had moved before the storm hit. Disaster response, they learned, is not climate adaptation.

As part of its current work, Pasisi now provides technical assistance to Pacific communities seeking grants from global donors such as the Green Climate Fund and the Adaptation Fund. But she said it often takes eight years for the money to arrive and local programs need funding faster.

Money and ambitious climate targets are important, but a delegation of young Māori from Aotearoa New Zealand is also calling for indigenous decision-making power on climate governance. Unlike many other Pacific island countries, such as Niue, Aotearoa’s Māori did not achieve self-determination through the UN process and do not have a seat at the UN table.

“We will not accept climate ‘solutions’ that repeat systems of extraction and inequity. Climate action must focus on indigenous rights, honor Te Tiriti o Waitangi and recognize the personhood of te taiao,” they said in a statement referring to a treaty between Maori leaders and New Zealand’s first settlers, and using the term Maori for the natural world.

Earlier this year, a mountain known as Taranaki Maunga was granted legal personality in Aotearoa, a legal status intended to further the conservation and traditional uses of the area considered an ancestor of the Māori people. Aotearoa has also granted legal personality to a forest and a river, part of a growing movement to recognize the rights of nature, also rooted in indigenous values.

By now, Pasisi has attended more COPs than she can remember, and she knows that even when political leaders make big promises, the next administration can easily backtrack on their promises. “It’s definitely destructive for a lot of people who have been in this process for so long,” she said.

But this year, what gives him the most hope is not what world leaders have said, or even the text of the ICJ decision: it is the enthusiasm and dedication of Pacific youth like Rikimani. “I think when you see young people standing up and saying, ‘Actually, this is my future, we’re not going to drown, we’re going to survive and thrive. There’s no option to fail’ – that kind of commitment from our young people and their voices is really powerful and encouraging,” Pasisi said.

“The fact that they led the ICJ appeal shows how powerful young people can be if you give them space and support them in this process. »