缅北轮奸

Countries that fall short in efforts to limit global warming to 1.5掳C face growing legal risks that could push them to accelerate climate adaptation efforts.

The threat of lawsuits now looms over companies and governments that don’t take aggressive climate action, following an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice, said , a professor of urban climate at Singapore Management University.

“This acceleration of the momentum from the legal side would help with the business impetus toward climate adaptation and mitigation,” he said at the Bloomberg Sustainable Business Summit in Singapore on Wednesday.

The ICJ said in a legally non-binding opinion last week that countries have a responsibility to do what they can to limit global warming to the critical threshold of 1.5C, adding that failure to do so may violate international law. The opinion was grounded in science from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations scientific body.

Around the world, many of the most climate-vulnerable citizens, communities and nations are suing countries and corporations over what they see as a lack of climate action. They want to force polluters and governments to pay for past harms and to avert future threats, and they’re using the law to assign blame for the damages.

“The game is changed with this ruling,” said Chow. “You can expect potential litigation.”

He underscored that the world should stick to the Paris Agreement goal of limiting the world’s temperature rise to below 2C degrees, rather than pursuing a new approach to measuring progress.

While countries that breach their official pledges will not actually face prosecution, the ICJ ruling sets an authoritative benchmark for assessing where they are falling short, both in terms of emissions cuts and finance to poorer nations.

Top photograph: Subsidence following flash floods in Chiva, Spain. Photo credit: Angel Garcia/Bloomberg