The paramount chief of a volcanic island in Vanuatu said Thursday he was “very impressed” by a global court’s declaration that countries must tackle climate change.
Vanuatu spearheaded the legal case at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, which found countries have a duty to protect against the “urgent and existential” threat of a warming planet.
“I’m very impressed,” George Bumseng, the highest chief of the Pacific archipelago’s cyclone-prone island of Ambrym, told AFP in the capital Port Vila.
“We have been waiting for this decision for a long time because we have been victims of this climate change for the past two decades,” he said at the country’s council of chiefs meeting house.
The chief recalled that his island was battered by three tropical cyclones in 2023, with twin cyclones Judy and Kevin striking in March of that year, followed by Lola in October.
The storms damaged “a lot of our root crops and forests and our traditional medicines”, said Bumseng, who is chairman of the Ambrym council of chiefs.
Global warming “keeps on changing our environment”, the chief said.
“We no longer have fig trees. There’s coastal erosion continuously. Our tide is also changing,” he said.
– ‘In our hands’ –
“Some of the traditional crops are no longer growing like before,” he added.
Young people in Vanuatu hailed the international court’s decision, citing the rising seas and fierce storms menacing their futures.
Children at one storm-battered school held up paper hand-written signs reading “Rising seas threaten our shores” and “Our school is threatened by sea level rise” as they posed for photos with the nearby beach behind them.
Their Suango primary and secondary school on the main island of Efate still relies partly on tents after being damaged by the cyclones of 2023 and then rocked by last year’s earthquake.
At a student festival in Port Vila, Susan Alexander said she and other young people were “very happy” with the court decision.
“Our country of Vanuatu has been one of the most vulnerable populations this past few years due to all these challenges that we’ve been through,” she told AFP.
“We have experienced cyclones, sea level rise across our country. This country lies in our hands.”
The six-year push towards the court’s decision began in a small university classroom in Vanuatu.
Frustrated by the glacial global efforts to tackle climate change, 27 law students decided to, in their words, “get the world’s biggest problem before the world’s highest court”.
