The recent proceedings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, were suspended, after strong opposition from countries dependent on high volumes of global heating emissions called for delay in reporting for the current Assessment Cycle. One very consequential implication will be the delay in consideration of the best-available, consensus science, for much or all of the next Global Stocktake of nations’ progress in reducing emissions and adapting to rapidly spreading risks.
The first principle at work here is that all nations have a fundamental, irreducible duty to honor transcendent human rights and dignity, and to avoid creating any preventable harm, for all of the people, regardless of their political structure or preferences of their current senior officials. That duty extends to relationships with other nations as well, and to a duty of care for the security and wellbeing of the people of those other nations.
When the International Court of Justice found that nation-state governments have a legal duty to act to reduce the threat of climate harm to their people, to the people of other nations, and to future generations, the finding noted:
- The foundations of international law, including universal human rights, require that this duty be recognized and honored.
- Nations have also committed, formally, to a legally binding treaty, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, to “prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.”
- Customary international law requires that legitimate authorities act with deference to the right of all people and communities to remain free from harm.
The very sovereignty some nations claim as motivation for their refusal to cooperate can only exist in real legal terms and be defended, if nations consistently decline to create harm inside the territory of other countries. Global heating pollution causes grave, deadly, and destabilizing harm, to people and communities in all regions and nations.
The 2026 State of the Climate report, released this month, opens with this clear finding:
We are witnessing the rapid destabilization of the Earth’s climate system. This is no longer a warning for the future; it is a diagnosis of the present. Earth’s life-support systems are being pushed beyond stable limits, with changes unfolding faster than our ability to respond. Human activities are driving profound shifts in the atmosphere, oceans, and biosphere.
The UN Environment Programme report Limiting Overshoot, released in September, found that human activity will drive global heating beyond the 1.5ºC threshold for unmanageable danger within a few years, possibly by 2030. That report also found that without aggressive action to halt and reverse this ‘overshoot’, agricultural production will decline by 14% by 2050, even as the population keeps growing.
Aside from impacts on Nature, watersheds, critical weather patterns, adjacent ecosystems, and soils, extreme heat will also reduce productivity by removing human labor capacity from the landscape. Extreme heat could reduce labor capacity by 40% or more in coming years. The new joint report from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Meterological Organization (WMO) on Extreme Heat and Agriculture, suggests destabilizing impacts to food production and the macroeconomy could be greater than even the Limiting Overshoot report suggests.
Agricultural production has been growing, more and more slowly, but still growing, while the Food System Economics Commission found that unsustainable practices and their impacts on Nature, climate, health, and future agricultural production, have been generating $15.428 trillion in cost and waste since at least 2016. Steep declines in production will lead to unprecedented price rises, which will be pervasive and persistent, greatly adding to that economic damage and political instability.
Some of the world’s most agriculturally productive ‘breadbasket’ regions are currently involved in devastating armed conflict, as are some of the world’s most vulnerable and import-dependent countries. Rapid collapse of agricultural productivity will greatly exacerbate the tensions that lead to armed conflict and instability, with food-, water-, and migration-related conflict potentially affecting all regions by 2040.
For commercial interests or their allies in government to obstruct an open, cooperative science endeavor, to artificially boost commercial ventures that create this havoc, is fundamentally delegitimizing, and will lead to pervasive, compounding costs, across the world, which will reach unprecedented levels in coming decades. The destabilizing effects will operate on scales no existing institution is prepared for. As the 2023 State of the Climate report warned:
By the end of this century, an estimated 3 to 6 billion individuals — approximately one-third to one-half of the global population — might find themselves confined beyond the livable region, encountering severe heat, limited food availability, and elevated mortality rates because of the effects of climate change (Lenton et al. 2023).
The idea that countries and commercial entities that knowingly and intentionally generate this destabilizing damage will not be held legally accountable is implausible. The ICJ Advisory Opinion effectively empowers jurists at all levels, in all countries, to identify and act on traceable climate liability, in line with foundational standards of rights, justice, and legal remedy.
In his encyclical letter Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo XIV reminded that “truth is a common good and not the property of those with power or influence.” He was writing about the importance of safeguarding access to evidence and truth in the relationship between people and AI systems, but the principle applies broadly to all relationships of power and service, whether in the commercial or governmental realms.
No nation has any lawful right to obstruct, or to interfere for political or commercial reasons, in the independent scientific proceedings of the IPCC, or any science endeavor aimed at providing people and public servants with factual information about climate-related risk, cost, and danger. Such interference is delegitimizing, and will inevitably carry a cost in terms of diplomatic clout and future economic opportunity.
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