The UN Must Establish the International Environmental Court Before It's Too Late | Opinion

At the dawn of 2025, the U.K.'s Met Office issued a stark warning that CO2 levels are on track to push global temperatures well beyond the critical 1.5 degrees Celsius limit. This shouldn't come as a surprise—the last two years were the hottest on record.

Small Island Developing States (SIDS) are already suffering the devastating effects of climate change. Over the last 20 years, the Caribbean region suffered losses of $137 billion due to hurricanes, storm surges, heat waves, droughts, and other unprecedented climate extremes. More than 400,000 people were negatively impacted.

Like many SIDS, we in the Caribbean are increasingly susceptible to tropical storms, biodiversity loss, rising sea levels, and resource scarcity. As these vulnerabilities combine and compound, our economy will continue to plummet, forcing us to take on insurmountable debts that threaten our sustainable development goals.

Fortunately, there is a veritable roadmap to environmental salvation.

Last December, more than 100 countries tendered their legal submissions to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), informing its upcoming advisory opinion on the duty of individual countries to play their part in averting a global catastrophe.

Having previously served as an Appeals counsel at the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and as a judge of the International Criminal Court (ICC), I firmly believe in the efficacy of international law.

Take, for example, the advisory opinion given by the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea back in 2024. At the request of the Commission of Small Island States on Climate Change and International Law (COSIS), the Tribunal outlined countries' obligations to protect the marine environment from greenhouse gas emissions.

Clearly, there is a growing movement within the international community, calling for greater emphasis on the role of judicial bodies to clarify and resolve disputed responsibilities for the state of our planet.

While the ICJ can offer legal guidance to U.N. member states, its advisory opinions cannot be enforced. For that, we need an innovative new court with the power to adjudicate environmental issues when non-judicial means of settlement either fail or are unavailable.

I have long proposed that the U.N. should harness the ICJ's opinion to trigger the creation of an International Environmental Court (IEC)—established using a statutory process similar to that which empowered the ICC to issue arrest warrants, prison sentences, and financial penalties.

Just as the Rome Statute awarded the ICC its jurisdiction over genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and aggression, a new statute could create a specialized IEC to handle environmental violations as outlined by the ICJ's guidance.

This could also cement global treaties under international law, mandating the transition of words into action.

The historic UAE Consensus was signed by 197 countries at the COP28 climate summit in 2023. Led by the UAE presidency of Dr. Sultan Al Jaber, they agreed to "transition away" from fossil fuels.

For some, this commitment really meant something. Living up to its role as COP28's host, the United Arab Emirates encouraged ADNOC, its state-owned energy company, to diversify into the sustainable resources of the future—from carbon capture and conservation to the acquisition of chemical innovators. Meanwhile, its renewable energy pioneer has been formally endorsed to construct the world's first "around the clock" giga-scale energy facility, combining solar power and battery storage.

But for others, the momentum behind COP28 quickly faded away. By the time COP29 rolled around a year later, the UAE Consensus was in grave danger. With no legal setup to enforce its pledges, it was pushed back for renegotiation in 2025.

An IEC, granted statutory jurisdiction over breaches of environmental duty, could force national governments to fulfil their promises. Not only would this incentivize them to divert investment toward cleaner fuels and impose regulations on corporations that are unwilling to change, it would also amass a body of case law to be deployed by private law firms in their own climate battles.

Ultimately, the legal might of an IEC could help us to mobilize the financial and technical support we need to stop investing in our own destruction and begin building a better world for future generations.

Critics will argue that the IEC's authority would only hold over those who ratified its statute. But we must not forget that the ICC was created with the minimum threshold of just 60 countries. It is now recognized as a unique legal system at the very pinnacle of international justice, with 125 members worldwide.

Over just 20 years, the ICC has matured from a dogged startup to the juridical tour de force we see today. Sixty countries are all it would take. In other words, less than a third of those who willingly agreed to the UAE Consensus.

I am resolute in my belief that the support is there. Now, we just need to capture it before it's too late.

Justice Anthony Thomas Aquinas Carmona, O.R.T.T., S.C., L.L.D. (HON), was the fifth president of Trinidad and Tobago, a position he held from 2013 to 2018. He is an international legal luminary and pioneering jurist, who has previously served as Trinidad & Tobago's deputy director of public prosecutions. Justice Carmona was the Appeals counsel in the Office of the Prosecutor during the International Criminal Tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda. In 2004, he was appointed as a high court judge at the Supreme Court of Trinidad and Tobago, before being elected as a judge of the International Criminal Court in late 2011, and sworn-in early the next year.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.