Turning the tide? Interpreting the ICJ Advisory Opinion through a Pacific SIDS climate justice lens

Climate justice has become a standard reference point in commentary on climate litigation—including discussion of the International Court of Justice's (ICJ) Advisory Opinion (AO) on States' climate obligations—yet it is often invoked without conceptual precision, limiting nuanced assessment of how climate litigation can advance climate justice. This article reads the AO through a Pacific Small Island Developing States (SIDS) climate‐justice lens. Building on climate‐justice scholarship, we apply a three‐part framework—distributional, procedural and recognition justice—to ask what Pacific SIDS sought in the AO proceedings and how the Court responded. The analysis draws on Pacific SIDS submissions and contrasts them with nine non‐SIDS submissions. We show that Pacific SIDS frame climate change as an existential threat to self‐determination—political, cultural and economic—shaped by colonial, racial and economic inequality. Their submissions translate this diagnosis into six clusters of legal claims: stringent, fossil‐fuel‐focused mitigation based on due diligence and prevention (and tied to the 1.5°C goal); continuity of statehood and maritime entitlements despite sea‐level rise; protection and cooperation in relation to climate‐related displacement; human‐rights‐centred approaches (including cultural and intergenerational dimensions and extraterritorial effects); substantial and predictable financial support, including for loss and damage; and structural reforms to climate governance and related economic rules. Read through this lens, the AO most clearly advances climate justice where it clarifies sources of obligation, sharpens standards of diligence and cooperation and links climate harm to human rights and remedies. It is more cautious on quantification of finance and mitigation and on institutional redesign. We conclude by identifying concrete pathways through which Pacific SIDS and allies can use the AO in diplomacy and litigation to pursue fairer, more inclusive and more respectful climate outcomes.