The World Is Burning, Urgently and Irreparably – a Plea for Interim Protection against Climatic Change at the ICJ

Abstract

As climate negotiations fail to deliver the progress that States, activists, and others desire to see in tackling climate change, attention is rapidly turning to potential legal responses. This article investigates the potential of the ICJ’s contentious procedure as a forum for climate-related complaints, and focuses in particular on the provisional measures phase of a case. We consider the potential for a climate-related application for interim protection to meet the test set down by the Court for the issuing of a provisional measures order: prima facie jurisdiction, plausibility, and an urgent risk of irreparable prejudice. We conclude that a carefully constructed climate application could meet these criteria, but that it would be important to foresee and take account of a future application for interim protection from the outset in designing a case.