Youth for Climate Justice
September 2022, Karlsruhe, Germany: Activists demand attention to the climate crisis during a protest at the World Council of Churches' 11th Assembly in Karlsruhe, Germany. (Photo: Paul Jeffrey/WCC)
World Council of Churches | July 24, 2025
The International Court of Justice (ICJ), on July 23, delivered a ruling on States’ obligations in relation to climate change. Following on the heels of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruling, this opinion clarifies that States have binding legal duties grounded in science, equity, and fundamental human rights.
The ICJ affirmed that States have an obligation under international law to protect the climate from anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions not least for “present and future generations” and to act with a stringent level of due diligence to prevent global warming from exceeding the 1.5C threshold as agreed in the Paris Agreement. Not doing so could pave the way for affected parties to seek reparations.
This legal duty stems not only from the Paris Agreement, but also from human rights law, the law of the sea, and the customary duty to prevent transboundary harm.
The United Nations’s highest court asserted that a “clean, healthy, and sustainable environment” is a human right, and that failing to protect the planet from the impacts of climate change may constitute a violation of international law.
Bishop Prof. Dr Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, moderator of the World Council of Churches (WCC) central committee, welcomed the decision.
“This is a historic ruling of the ICJ. Even though as an advisory opinion it is not binding for States, it will be a highly relevant legal orientation by the highest judicial body on this globe,” he said.
Bedford-Strohm stressed that for the first time with this clarity in international law, the rights of future generations are seen as the referral point of today’s legal framework.
“No longer is it possible to live a life now, for which people in the future must pay the bill. What has long been seen by churches, religious communities, and nongovernmental organizations as a moral obligation has now been stated as a legal obligation,” he added.
“For the WCC it is a strong encouragement for the recently launched Decade for Climate Justice Action which we just proclaimed at our central committee meeting in Johannesburg. We call on all States to redirect their political priorities and take measures for an ecological transformation, which honors the interests of future generations as much as those of people living now,” he said.
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