<div style="text-align: justify; "><span style="font-size: 1rem;">The UN maritime court will on Monday hear a landmark case brought by a group of small island states seeking protection of the world's oceans from catastrophic climate change.</span><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The nine island states have turned to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea to determine if carbon dioxide emissions absorbed by the oceans can be considered pollution, and if so, what obligations countries have to prevent it.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Ocean ecosystems create half the oxygen humans breathe and limit global warming by absorbing much of the carbon dioxide emitted by human activities.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But increasing emissions can warm and acidify seawaters, harming marine life.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The counties have pointed to the international treaty UNCLOS that binds countries to preventing pollution of the oceans.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The UN treaty defines pollution as the introduction by humans of "substances or energy into the marine environment" that leads to harm to marine life.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But it does not spell out carbon emissions as a specific pollutant, and the plaintiffs argue these emissions qualify.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Entire marine and coastal ecosystems are dying in waters that are becoming warmer and more acidic. The science is clear and undisputed: these impacts are the result of climate change brought on by greenhouse gas emissions," said Tuvalu's Prime Minister Kausea Natano.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"We come here seeking urgent help, in the strong belief that international law is an essential mechanism for correcting the manifest injustice that our people are suffering as a result of climate change."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">- Marine heatwave -</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The push for climate justice won a big boost when the UN General Assembly in March adopted a resolution calling on the International Court of Justice to lay out nations' obligations on protecting Earth's climate and the legal consequences they face if they fail to do so.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The move at the UN had been led by Vanuatu, which also counts among the plaintiffs in Monday's case in Hamburg, Germany.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Small islands like Vanuatu are particularly exposed to the impact of global warming, with seawater rises threatening to submerge entire countries.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Without rapid and ambitious action, climate change may prevent my children and grandchildren from living on the island of their ancestors, the island that we call home. We cannot remain silent in the face of such injustice," said the Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, Gaston Browne.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"We have come before this Tribunal in the belief that international law must play a central role in addressing the catastrophe that we witness unfolding before our eyes," he added.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Across the two-thirds of the planet covered by seas, nearly 60 percent of ocean surface waters experienced at least one marine heatwave in 2022, according to the annual State of the Climate report led by scientists from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">This is 50 percent more than pre-industrial levels and "the highest in the modern atmospheric record and in paleoclimate records dating back as far as 800,000 years", the report published this month noted.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The world's oceans also set a new temperature record in August. Average sea surface temperatures reached an unprecedented 21 degrees Celsius (69.8 degrees Fahrenheit) for over a week, according to the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service, after months of unusually high temperatures.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Other plaintiffs in the ITLOS case include The Bahamas, Niue, Palau, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia as well as St Vincent and the Grenadines.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Thirty-four other state parties will also participate in the court hearing, with sessions scheduled through to September 25. AFP</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">bnbd24/kh</div>