• Nine island states urged UN maritime court action on climate change.
• ITLOS will decide if ocean-absorbed CO2 counts as pollution.
• The goal is concrete steps from nations, not just promises.

On Monday, the heads of nine tiny island states petitioned the UN maritime court to preserve the world’s waters from the catastrophic climate change that threatens the very survival of whole nations.

The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) has been tasked by the island states with determining whether or not carbon dioxide emissions absorbed by the oceans qualify as pollution and, if so, what obligations nations have to avoid it.

“This is the opening chapter in the struggle to change the conduct of the international community by clarifying the obligation of states to protect the marine environment,” said the prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, Gaston Browne.

“The time has come to speak in terms of legally binding obligations rather than empty promises that go unfulfilled,” he told the court based in Hamburg, Germany.

The goal, according to Catherine Amirfar, the joint counsel for the islands, is to compel nations to take significant action to combat climate change.

“We’re here to discuss what are the necessary, concrete, specific steps that they must take as a matter of law, not political discretion. That’s key and… a big part of the answer,” she told journalists.

Half of the oxygen we breathe comes from ocean ecosystems, which also prevent global warming by absorbing most of the carbon dioxide produced by human activity.

But escalating emissions can cause seawater to warm and become more acidic, killing marine life.

The international treaty UNCLOS, which obliges nations to stop ocean pollution, is at the center of the dispute.

According to the UN treaty, pollution is the act of humans introducing “substances or energy into the marine environment” and causing harm to marine life.

However, the plaintiffs contend that carbon emissions ought to be included even if it does not specifically list them as a pollution.

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