North–South Divergence on the Right to a Healthy Environment and State responsibility for climate change A Critical Analysis of State Written Statements to the ICJ on Climate Obligations

The North–South divide has been a persistent feature of international law since the era of decolonization, but it permeated international environmental law beginning with the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment. This landmark event highlighted ideological tensions between the Global North and South regarding the relationship between environmental protection and economic development. The resulting Stockholm Declaration offered the first articulation of the right to a healthy environment. The divide resurfaced at the 1992 Rio Conference, where an apparent compromise sought to reconcile developmental priorities with environmental concerns. That conference contributed significantly to the procedural framing of the right to a healthy environment and led to the adoption of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), followed by the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement. The paper argues that the provisions of the three climate change treaties are illustrative of the North-South divide. It maintains that while the nexus between human rights (including the right to a healthy environment) and climate change has been acknowledged in various international legal instruments, States’s views are divided on the status of the right to a healthy environment in international law. It explores how states perceive the intersection of this right and climate obligations, with attention to whether these views diverge along North–South lines. Considering specifically the written statements of Vanuatu, India and the African Union on one hand and those of the European Union, the United Kingdom and the United States on the other, the paper concludes that it seems difficult to adopt a ‘one size-fits all’ approach.