CONCEPT NOTE
Webinar Series on Advisory Opinions on Climate Change
Background & Context
Small Island Developing States (SIDS) are the canaries in the coalmine of the climate crisis and have become the champions of climate justice in the international arena. Over 2023 and 2024, the cause célèbre of climate change has exploded into the lexicon of international law, with requests for advisory opinions to the major international courts and tribunals. The trio of advisory opinions of the International Tribunal to the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), the Inter American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) were in May 2025 joined by the extant opinion of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (AfCHPR), and have ushered in an unprecedented and historic era for climate justice.
The trio of advisory opinions which were delivered in May 21, 2024, July 3 and 23 2025 respectively, aim to clarify the obligations of States under international law with respect to climate change. The outcome of these proceedings and their subsequent implementation will have wide-ranging and long-lasting implications for the future of our planet and the survival of humanity, including vulnerable States, such as Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and peoples on the frontlines of climate change, such as Afro-descendent peoples, Indigenous peoples, women and gender minorities, migrants, children, the elderly, persons with disabilities, youth, and future generations.
Within this context, the Caribbean, which comprises at least sixteen SIDS is one of the ‘living laboratories’ in the fight for climate justice, and is the SIDS region most disproportionately impacted from loss and damage (ODI Working Paper, 2023). Caribbean legal scholars, jurists and members of the legal fraternity have been integrally involved in the proceedings across the three judicial bodies and have formed strategic alliances with international actors during the advisory proceedings on climate change. Caribbean activism in the advisory proceedings included members and friends of the Faculty of Law, The University of the West Indies Cave Hill Campus and the International Law Association (ILA) (Caribbean Branch), including the Commission of Small Island States on Climate Change in International Law (COSIS), the Global Network for Human Rights & the Environment (GNHRE) (Caribbean Region), the Inter American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), the Relatoría Especial sobre los Derechos Económicos, Sociales, Culturales y Ambientales (REDESCA), World Youth for Climate Justice (WYCJ) and the Pacific Island Students Fighting Climate Change (PISFCC).
Purpose and Objectives
The Webinar Series is conceptualised with a particular focus on the implications of the Opinions for the law, policy, and future litigation in the Caribbean Region. Further, the Series will be a ‘conversation starter’ on the importance of action on climate justice from the Caribbean perspective, and the need for continued national, regional and international initiatives to address the climate crisis.
To achieve these goals, the three-part Series will bring together academics, civil society representatives and experts from within and outside the Caribbean Region, to celebrate Caribbean legal ingenuity and to offer insights into the alliances between Caribbean and other international actors in the landmark advisory proceedings on climate change. Additionally, it is important to all the Partners that the Series serves as a platform to amplify the voices of future Caribbean changemakers.
In recognition of the diverse and highly technical nature of the opinions, briefing notes will be prepared on each advisory opinion and circulated to participants in advance of the relevant webinar.
The objectives of the Series are:
1. To provide a brief review of the main takeaways of the three advisory opinions on climate change and relate these to the context of the Caribbean Region within the broader regional and international context;
2. To underscore the strengths of and synergies between the advisory opinions, and their implications for climate litigation, policy and diplomacy;
3. To outline the potential significance of the extant advisory opinion before the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (AfCHPR), given the increasing geopolitical relationship between Caribbean and African States/institutions;
4. To serve as the continuation of an ongoing conversation on the role of international law and the emergent paradigm of South World approaches to international law (SWAIL) and their importance in the Caribbean, regional and international context;
5. To familiarise Caribbean stakeholders with the work and activities of partners in the areas of climate justice within and beyond the Caribbean space.
Format
The Webinar Series will take place over a period of three weeks, spanning October 8, 2025 (Webinar for the Advisory Opinion of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea), October 16, 2025 (Webinar for the Advisory Opinion of the Inter American Court for Human Rights) and October 22, 2025 (Webinar for the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice).
All Webinars will be virtual, lasting for ninety (90 minutes), on the Zoom platform, will be moderated and will serve as a space for dialogue between the audience and the speakers. This will take the form of structured conversations, involving the moderator posing questions Audience engagement will be facilitated through the Question & Answer feature.
Webinar on the Advisory Opinion of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea
October 8, 2025, at 6:00 p.m.
AST speakers. On May 21, 2024, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) delivered its Advisory Opinion on the obligations of states on climate change and international law (Opinion) at the Request of the Commission of Small Island States on Climate Change and International Law (COSIS). COSIS had requested ITLOS to identify specific obligations of state parties to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) including under Part XII (Protection & Preservation of the Marine Environment). The Opinion identified several obligations, including in Articles 192, 194, 207, 212, 213, and 222 of UNCLOS and analysed the nature of these obligations. Specifically, it addressed whether these are due diligence obligations of conduct under which states are required to do their best to achieve a specific goal or objective, or obligations of result, under which they must achieve a specific result (Dimitrakos (ed.), 2025).
Moderator
Zachary A.R. Phillips
Crown Counsel in the Attorney General’s Chambers in Antigua & Barbuda, Legal Officer and Oral Advocate for the Commission on Small Island States for climate change and international law & Member, International Law Association, Caribbean Branch
Panel
1. Clement Yow Mulalap Legal Advisor, Permanent Mission of the Federated States of Micronesia to the United Nations
2. Angelique Pouponnneau Oceans Coordinator, Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS)
3. Conway Blake Partner, Debevoise & Plimpton
Webinar on the Advisory Opinion of the Inter American Court of Human Rights
October 16, 2025, at 6:00 p.m. AST
On July 3, 2025, the President of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR), Nancy Hernández López, announced the publication of a crucial advisory opinion on climate change as a result of an inquiry by Colombia and Chile, which in 2023 asked what legal responsibilities states have to tackle climate change and to stop them breaching people’s human rights. Stating that climate change carries “extraordinary risks” that are felt particularly keenly by people who are already vulnerable, the strongly worded and wide-ranging 234-page document set out its perspective on the climate emergency and human rights, including that there is a human right to a stable climate and states have a duty to protect it. Further, the Court elucidated that States have legal obligations to protect people alive today and future generations from the impacts of climate breakdown. These include taking “urgent and effective” actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions based on the best available science, to adapt, to cooperate internationally, and to guard against the threat of climate disinformation. During the preliminary stages of the application the Costa Rica-based court received hundreds of submissions and held a series of hearings in 2024 in Barbados and the Brazilian cities of Brasília and Manaus in 2023 (Kaminiski, 2025).
Moderator
Alana Malinde S.N. Lancaster
Lecturer in Law & Head of the Caribbean Environmental Law Unit, Faculty of Law, The UWI at Cave Hill, Executive Member, International Law Association (Caribbean Branch); Regional Director for Global Network for Human Rights and the Environment (Caribbean)
Panel
1. Javier Palummo Lantes
Special Rapporteur on Economic, Social, Cultural and Environmental Rights of the Inter American Commission on Human Rights (REDESCA)
2. Rico Yearwood
Solicitor General’s Office & Member of Delegation, Government of Barbados; Adjunct Lecturer in Law, Faculty of Law, The UWI at Cave Hill
3. Catalina Fernandez Carter
Legal Advisor, Government of Chile &Professor of International Law at the University of Chile
Webinar on the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice
October 22, 2025
In its landmark Advisory Opinion published on Wednesday July 23, 2025, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) categorically stated that States must prevent harm to the climate system, and that failing to do so could result in their having to pay compensation and make other forms of restitution, including the payment of reparations. Presenting the 133-page document President of the Court, Yūji Iwasawa, said climate breakdown had severe and far-reaching consequences which affected natural ecosystems and people and that “[t]hese consequences underscore an urgent existential threat.” The unanimous Opinion covers a wide range of matters under international law, including the liability of States for all kinds of activities that harm the climate, with an explicit aim at fossil fuels. Further, the Opinion explored a State’s failure to take appropriate action to protect the climate system from greenhouse gas emissions, including through the production and consumption of fossil fuels, the granting of fossil fuel exploration licences or the provision of fossil fuel subsidies, all of which may constitute an international wrongful act which is attributable to that State. (Kaminiski, 2025 ).
Moderator
Annika K. Bellot
Attorney at Law, Climate Justice Advocate, Fellow of the Alliance for Small Island States (2024) & Chevening Scholar 2021/22
Panel
1. Elisa Morgera Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights in the Context of Climate Change
2. Justin Sobion Senior Tutor and Graduate Teaching Assistant at the University of Auckland’s Faculty of Law and Coordinator of the Earth Trusteeship Working Group
3. Rueanna Haynes Head of Diplomacy and Director of Climate Analytics Caribbean
4. Ashawnté D. Russell Caribbean Front Coordinator, Global, World’s Youth for Climate Justice
5. Abdul Mufeez Shaheed Campaigner, ICJAO at Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change (PISFCC)
Contacts
For further information and clarifications, please contact Alana Malinde S.N. Lancaster (alana.lancaster@uwi.edu) or Alois A. Mugadza at (alois.mugadza@uwi.edu) at the Caribbean Environmental Law Unit (CELU).
Partners
The International Law Association (Caribbean Branch)
The International Law Association (ILA), founded in 1873, is a body for the study, clarification and development of public and private international law and the furtherance of international understanding and respect for international law. There are over 50 branches and 4,000 members across the world representing every continent. The ILA has consultative status with a number of the United Nations specialised agencies. The objectives of the ILA are primarily pursued through the substantive work of its international committees and study groups.
The International Law Association, Caribbean Branch was founded in 2014, with its objects including promotion of understanding of and progressive development of international law in the Caribbean and participation in the work of the ILA. to promote “the study, clarification and development of international law, both public and private, and the furtherance of international understanding and respect for international law.” The Caribbean Branch’s membership ranges from lawyers in private practice, academia, government, and the judiciary, to non-lawyer experts from corporate, commercial, trade, environmental and climate justice and financial spheres. Members of the Branch have served on Committees and Study Groups of the ILA, and the Branch engages in outreach activities, such as conferences, webinars and dialogues, to promote the understanding of and respect for international law in the Caribbean.
The Faculty of Law at Cave Hill
Celebrating fifty-five years in 2025, the Faculty of Law at Cave Hill is the founding, and longest existing Faculty at the Cave Hill Campus and boasts a rich tradition of excellence of solid tradition of legal research and the most extensive repository of legal resources in the Region. In the face of the expansion of law faculties across the region, the Faculty at Cave Hill has continued to distinguish itself and lead the way in both traditional as well as contemporary fields of law that are critical to the Caribbean Region. Critical to providing support to stakeholders in the Region and preparing a cadre of legal professionals who are expertly trained current paradigms, has been the establishment of three Units aimed at social equity, environmental and corporate sustainability.
The Faculty is updating its offerings in line with contemporary legal concepts that now underpin many of the efforts of sustainability and development of Caribbean States, taking cognizance of the peculiarities of the legal systems of Commonwealth Caribbean countries and policy approaches with a focus on the Small Island Developing States (SIDS) positionality of the Caribbean.
The Caribbean Environmental Law Unit of the Faculty of Law
The Faculty’s Caribbean Environmental Law Unit (formerly the Environmental Law, Ocean Governance & Climate Justice Unit) has been actively involved in the three advisory opinions and is supporting colleagues on the advisory opinion pending at the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights. Within this context, the Unit has undertaken collaborations within the wider UWI ecosystem, across the region and internationally, and is the focal point on climate justice and climate litigation issues in the Caribbean Region.
The Unit was established in 2023 within the Faculty of Law at Cave Hill as a legal centre of excellence in three distinct, yet interlinked, thematic areas of importance to the Caribbean Region. This focus, dovetails with the strategic focus of The University of the West Indies inter alia, climate action and advocacy; a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship; and as an SDG-engaged university, prioritising global partnerships, connecting knowledge to opportunities for multi-stakeholder development solutions with a special focus on the Caribbean and Small Island Developing States.
This call for the University to be an activist institution has also allowed the Unit to further several of the goals set out in the Faculty of Law’s Strategic Plan 2022 to 2027, and among other mandates, will expand on the work of the Faculty of Law in the general area of (international & regional) environmental and human rights law and focus on contemporary areas of environmental law, such as ocean governance and the concept of climate justice. The latter area in recent years has expanded from merely climate litigation within the constitutional and public law sphere to intersect with international human rights law, the law of reparations and debt justice, international financial and trade law, international investment law, Third and Fourth World (TWAIL/FWAIL) approaches to international law, the law of the sea, blue, fisheries and environmental crime, ecocide, environmental, children and other human rights defenders and the proposed internationally binding instrument on plastics.
The Global Network for Human Rights and the Environment (GNHRE)
The Global Network for Human Rights and the Environment (GNHRE) is a community of scholars, activists, practitioners, defenders, researchers, and policy- makers working at the intersection of human rights and the environment. Together they produce, exchange, and learn from world-leading scholarship and insights drawn from community-embedded experience and practice all over the world, including the Caribbean Region, which has done recent work on the issue of climate change, and the Latin American Chapter, which has spearheaded efforts on the Escazú Agreement.
The Commission of Small Island States on Climate Change and International Law (COSIS)
Faced with the existential threat of climate change, as well as inaction on the international stage, the Prime Ministers of Antigua and Barbuda and Tuvalu signed the Agreement for the Establishment of the Commission of Small Island States on Climate Change and International Law (COSIS) on the eve of CoP26. The Agreement inter alia allowed Member States to take collective action to protect and preserve the climate system, including the marine environment, through the promotion, progressive development, and implementation of rules and principles of international law concerning climate change. The organization counts nine members, in order of accession: Antigua and Barbuda, Tuvalu, Palau, Niue, Vanuatu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Kitts and Nevis, and The Bahamas. Membership is open to any member of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS).
The World’s Youth for Climate Justice (WYCJ)
The World’s Youth for Climate Justice (WYCJ) is a global campaign taking climate change and human rights to the International Court of Justice to get an advisory opinion. In 2019, twenty law students from the University of the South Pacific formed the Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change (PISFCC). In the same year, the Vanuatu government tabled the PISFCC’s proposal at the Pacific Island Forum, where the eighteen member states of the PISFCC noted positively the proposal for a United Nations General Assembly resolution seeking an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJAO) on climate change and human rights.
Although a crucial step in the right direction, the resolution needed a simple majority vote of the 193 member states of the UN to be successful. Recognising this reality, the ICJAO campaign has grown beyond the Pacific, where Pacific youth and partners are working tirelessly to galvanize support both regionally and internationally. Youth from around the world have united in this mission under the youth-led umbrella organisation World’s Youth for Climate Justice (WYCJ).
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR)
Created by the OAS in 1959, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) has its headquarters in Washington, D.C. and is an autonomous organ of the Organization of American States (“OAS”) whose mission is to promote and protect human rights in the American hemisphere. The Commission was established by the OAS Charter as one of the principal organs of the OAS whose function is to promote the observance and protection of human rights and to serve as a consultative organ of the Organization in these matters. It is composed of seven independent members who serve in a personal capacity. Together with the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (“the Court” or “the I/A Court H.R.), installed in 1979, the Commission is one of the institutions within the inter-American system for the protection of human rights (“IAHRS”).
The work of the IACHR rests on three main pillars:
• the individual petition system;
• monitoring of the human rights situation in the Member States, and
• the attention devoted to priority thematic areas.
Operating within this framework, the Commission considers that while the rights of all persons are subject to the jurisdiction of the Member States, they are to be protected, and special attention must be devoted to those populations, communities and groups that have historically been the targets of discrimination. However, the Commission’s work is also informed by other principles, among them the following: the pro homine principle, whereby a law must be interpreted in the manner most advantageous to the human being; the necessity of access to justice, and the inclusion of the gender perspective in all Commission activities.
Special Rapporteurship on Economic, Social, Cultural, and Environmental Rights/ Relatoría Especial sobre los Derechos Económicos, Sociales, Culturales y Ambientales (REDESCA)
On April 3, 2014, acknowledging the interdependence and indivisibility of human rights, the IACHR initiated the process to establish the Office of the Special Rapporteur on Economic, Social, Cultural and Environmental Rights. This endeavour concluded in 2017 with the launch of REDESCA and the appointment of its first leader, recognizing the interdependence and indivisibility of human rights.
The establishment and activation of REDESCA are part of a context of significant changes within the Inter American Human Rights System (IAHRS). This development has not occurred in isolation but reflects a series of jurisprudential and institutional advancements that have profoundly influenced the understanding and protection of these rights in the region. A pivotal step was taken in 2012 with the creation of a unit within the IACHR focused specifically on economic, social, cultural and environmental (ESCE) rights, addressing the need for specialized attention to a category of rights historically less emphasized compared to civil and political rights.
The creation of this Special Rapporteurship has bolstered the Inter-American Commission’s structure, enhancing its capacity to promote and protect ESCE rights. By establishing an office with functional independence and a specific Work Plan, in coordination with the Executive Secretariat, the Rapporteurship can focus on the hemisphere’s priority areas in this matter, thereby supporting the Commission in its essential institutional mandate to safeguard ESCE rights in the American continent.
Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change (PISFCC)
The Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change is a youth-led organisation whose members are students from the Pacific Island States of Fiji, Vanuatu, Tonga and the Solomon Islands, and members in every Pacific Island country and from all levels of education, from primary and high schools to postgraduate university students.
PISFCC began in March 2019 when 27 USP Law students from 8 Pacific Island countries decided to join together to begin a campaign to persuade the leaders of the Pacific Island Forum to take the issue of climate change and human rights to the International Court of Justice. PISFCC ‘s core campaign is to seek climate justice at the International Court of Justice by requesting the court to respond to a legal question that will develop international law, integrate legal obligations around environmental treaties and basic human rights, and clarify state responsibility for climate harm. They are also committed to educating and activating all Pacific Island youth to become aware and take action to help prevent and fight against climate change. After 6 years of campaigning, the work begun by the PISFCC culminated in the release of the climate advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice on July 23, 2025.