The ICJ Just Reframed Climate Change As a Legal Risk for Nations

A sweeping advisory opinion from The Hague declares climate change an urgent and existential threat and, for the first time, clearly states that countries have legal obligations under international law to cut emissions, regulate fossil fuel companies and account for the full lifecycle impact of their energy decisions, including end use pollution, a shift that transforms global warming from a largely political challenge into a question of legal liability, strengthens the hand of vulnerable nations like Kenya in demanding action and support, and opens a path, however uncertain, for communities already facing drought, displacement and conflict to seek accountability and potentially compensation from the world’s biggest emitters

In the scrubland along Kenya’s northern frontier, where the wind carries dust across the borderlands of Marsabit and Wajir, climate change is not an abstraction. It is a daily calculation of loss. For Wario Godana, a 58-year-old pastoralist in the village of Badan Rero, it is measured in cattle, unpaid school fees, and journeys that stretch for days in search of water.

“The devastating impacts of climate change have continued to wreak havoc,” he tells Impact Newswire, seated outside a primary school under a punishing afternoon sun. “We need future climate actions to stop the situation before we all perish.”

Four years ago, he recalls, such conversations were rare. Now they define the rhythm of life.

Between 2021 and 2022, four consecutive rainy seasons failed across northern Kenya, deepening one of the most severe droughts in recent memory. Mr Godana moved his herd across Isiolo, Mandera and Samburu counties, even crossing into Ethiopia, chasing pasture that no longer came. He lost more than 190 cattle. The 10 that remain are thin, their recovery uncertain.

His story echoes across Kenya’s arid and semi-arid lands, where drought has affected millions since 2018. In Badan Rero alone, 85 families lost livestock, the backbone of local economies. Without it, livelihoods collapse. Children leave school. Families drift.

When the rains finally come, they arrive with violence. Floodwaters cut off roads, forcing aid deliveries by helicopter. Badan Rero Primary School, already short of teachers, can close for weeks. Students drop out.

For Mr Godana, the consequences are intimate. His two sons are not in junior secondary school. He cannot afford the 4,900 shillings, about $30, required for uniforms. He recalls a rainy season when his wife and four children fell severely ill with malaria as they grazed livestock. Reaching help meant a five-hour walk to the nearest road.

Climate stress has also sharpened old tensions. In January 2022, his family lost five members in clashes between the Borana and Degodia communities over dwindling water and pasture.

For years, communities like his have struggled not only against the elements, but against the limits of the law.

In 2019, a family from Badan Rero joined plaintiffs from Europe, Fiji and Sweden in a case before the Court of Justice of the European Union, arguing that insufficient climate action violated their fundamental rights. Known as the People’s Climate Case, it sought to compel the European Union to cut emissions more aggressively.

The court dismissed the case in March 2021, ruling that the individuals lacked standing. Habiba Guyo, one of the Kenyan applicants, called the decision “grave and retrogressive.” Her husband, Rob Wako, described it as “odious” and politically influenced.

Now, more than four years later, a different court has offered a markedly different signal.

On July 23, 2025, the International Court of Justice, the United Nations’ highest judicial body, issued a landmark advisory opinion on climate change. Requested by the General Assembly after a campaign led by the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu, the opinion does not bind states in the way a judgment would. But its authority is difficult to ignore.

The court described climate change as an “urgent and existential threat.” It concluded that states have legal obligations under international law to address it, drawing on frameworks that include the Paris Agreement, human rights law and customary international law.

Countries, the court said, must take robust steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and regulate corporate actors, including fossil fuel companies. Failure to do so could constitute a wrongful act, opening the door to claims for reparations by affected states and communities.

For vulnerable populations, the opinion amounts to something new: the possibility of accountability.

One of the most consequential shifts lies in how the court approached environmental impact assessments, the technical studies that guide decisions on major projects. Traditionally, these assessments have focused on emissions produced during extraction, such as those generated by oil rigs.

The court said that approach is no longer sufficient.

It held that assessments must include so-called end-use emissions, the greenhouse gases released when fossil fuels are ultimately burned. This matters because the bulk of emissions occurs not at the point of extraction, but at the point of consumption. Studies estimate that 75 to 85 percent of emissions linked to oil arise when it is used.

By requiring these emissions to be counted, the court reframed the decision to extract fossil fuels as the central climate question.

The reasoning builds on a growing body of case law. In 2024, the United Kingdom Supreme Court ruled in the Finch case that downstream emissions must be considered in project approvals. A similar conclusion followed from the European Free Trade Association court in a case involving Norwegian oil fields. The International Court of Justice has now elevated that principle to the global stage.

The opinion also clarified that adapting to climate change is not a discretionary policy choice. It is a legal duty. Governments must plan for and implement adaptation measures, while wealthier nations are expected to support poorer ones with finance, technology and expertise.

Though advisory, the ruling is already shaping legal arguments. In December 2025, the European Court of Human Rights cited it extensively in a case concerning oil projects in Norway, finding that environmental assessments were deficient because they failed to account for emissions from fuel use. Norwegian courts have since echoed that reasoning.

For countries like Kenya, the opinion provides a new lever in international negotiations and litigation. It strengthens the legal basis for demanding deeper emissions cuts from high-income, high-emitting nations, and for seeking support to cope with a changing climate.

In Badan Rero, the daily realities remain unchanged. The droughts, the floods, the long treks and the fragile peace persist. But far from the parched fields of northern Kenya, in a courtroom in The Hague, the terms of the debate have shifted.

After the European court rejected her case in 2021, Ms Guyo warned that pastoralist communities would continue to bear the brunt of a crisis they did little to create. The International Court of Justice has not erased that injustice.

But it has, at least in law, begun to redraw the boundaries of responsibility.

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