Excerpt from opendemocracy.net
Leaders of small island nations met on Tuesday to discuss suing countries in the Global North for the damage caused by emissions.
This week’s discussion, convened by the Commonwealth Foundation, was the first major meeting of the Commission of Small Island States on Climate Change and International Law, a body formed to help small island developing states (SIDS) bring legal action against major carbon-emitting countries.
The commission, announced last year at COP26 by Antigua and Barbuda with Tuvalu, has now called for as many countries as possible to join.
Kausea Natano, the prime minister of Tuvalu, said it was “a platform for small island states to channel their grievances on the impact of climate change to legal bodies”.
“[The commission] is intended to be a vehicle for collective action by small island states. To add yet another instrument in the toolbox to ensure that [loss and damage] is taken seriously,” said Payam Akhavan, the legal counsel advising the new commission. “We need to exact a cost so that major polluters radically change their behaviour.”
Akhavan argued that the principles of due diligence (that a state must not allow its territory to cause harm to other states) and ‘polluter pays’ – which have been applied for decades in international law – should also be applied in the context of greenhouse gas emissions.
Island Innovation is a social enterprise and digital media company at the intersection of sustainable development and communications, offering specialised services across various sectors. We bring together the private sector, government, utilities, NGOs and universities to advance innovation for sustainability and prosperity in islands worldwide.
