These are no ordinary times. Climate change has become an existential threat. As the world continues to procrastinate on planetary solution, climate change is gradually smouldering to a planetary crisis of monumental proportion. It is for this reason that International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued a landmark Advisory Court Opinion on the binding obligations of State Parties as well as legal consequences for violating these obligations.
Climate change is a market failure phenomenon associated to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that have negative effects on third parties, mainly people living in developing countries.
This externality problem continues to persist due to the absence of a credible international framework to force the emitters of GHG to internalise these external costs.
However, through a resolution of United Nation General Assembly, the ICJ was recently requested to issue an advisory opinion on climate change.
Specifically, the resolution requests the ICJ determination of States Parties’ obligations to the protections of climate system and legal consequences if the obligations were violated against the States and people.
Having established its jurisdiction and discretion over the opinion requested, the ICJ unanimously opined that first, the States Parties have legal obligations to deal with climate change under international law, including human rights, the UN Charter, and Law of the Sea.
Second, it emphasised that failure to meet these obligations constitutes an international wrongful act with legal consequences, potentially including reparation for climate harm. For the first time, the opinion laid out the groundbreaking framework to deal with climate change issues.
However, the efficacy of its legal penetration remains ambiguous due to weak enforcement mechanism of the international law. Nonetheless, it was a milestone. Inferably, climate change mitigation becomes an obligation for all State Parties, which can be extrapolated to households.
A Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis (Kippra) study has contextualised Kenya’s obligations by analysing the determinants of climate change mitigation behaviours at the households’ levels.
Among other findings, the study reveals that households in more extreme aridity areas had a lower probability of undertaking climate change mitigation measures, both in terms of the adoption decisions and intensity.
The implication of this revelation is that households in Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASALs) face double constraints; lower adaptations and mitigation efforts.
These are the most vulnerable households that disproportionately bear the burdens of the negativity externality of extreme climatic conditions.
The ICJ advisory opinion legally binds the national and county government in ASALs to support climate change mitigation measures like use solar powered equipment, biogas, energy-efficient cocking stoves and planting trees.
Thus, as a matter of public policy the national and county government must facilitate the residents in these regions to adopt such mitigation measures.
The writers are both policy analysts at KIPPRA.
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