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Judicial systems are becoming key players in climate action. Credit: UNDP

By Kanni Wignaraja
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 13 2025 (IPS)

Nature is taking the stand as courtrooms worldwide become battlegrounds for Earth’s rights. The rise in climate litigation shows how the environment can take centre stage as a plaintiff, demanding justice and accountability, benefiting us all.

On 23 October 2024, India’s Supreme Court declared a pollution-free environment a fundamental right, underscoring the government’s duty to provide clean air and water. In April 2024, the European Court of Human Rights ruled against the Swiss State for inadequate climate action, affirming climate change as a human rights issue.

Since 2017, climate change court cases have surged, particularly in the US, but increasingly worldwide. Cases tripled from 884 in 2017 to 2,540 in 2023, with about 17 percent now occurring in developing countries, including small island developing states. The legal landscape is evolving, with significant rulings in Asia and the Pacific driving change. This is an area where UNDP is providing crucial support.

Kanni Wignaraja

Early and groundbreaking work

For an example of climate justice pioneering, we can turn to 2010 to India’s National Green Tribunal and the Philippines’ Writ of Kalikasan (Kalikasan means Nature in Filipino language). This unique legal instrument – whose design was supported by UNDP – enables citizens to protect environmental rights by filing swift, accessible court petitions addressing ecological damages affecting multiple regions.

It allows immediate judicial intervention to safeguard balanced and healthy ecosystems. For example, it has been used to close dumpsites and illegal landfills, prompt the rehabilitation of Manila Bay, and order the listing of non-environmentally friendly plastic products.

Similarly, courts in Pakistan have adopted a “climate justice” perspective, forming a climate change commission. A notable case involved seven-year-old Rabab Ali, who challenged plans to expand coal production in the Thar desert, focusing on intergenerational equity in climate actions. Pakistan was also one of the main proponents of the Loss and Damage concept, when it was first tabled.

What are the emerging trends in climate litigation we are seeing now?

Following the landmark Paris Agreement in 2015, activists and citizens worldwide are increasingly turning to courts for climate solutions, spurring innovative legal approaches and rethinking what climate justice means. Key trends include:

Human rights-related to environmental assets and protections: Courts are recognizing the connection between climate change and human rights, boosting protections and accountability. Many courts now interpret constitutional rights to include environmental protections.

Intergenerational equity: Cases by youth emphasize the unequal impact of climate change on future generations and how climate justice is one of the main advocacy issues for youth worldwide.

Corporate accountability: Courts extending climate obligations to businesses.

Innovative legal concepts: New principles like “water justice” and recognizing nature’s legal rights are gaining traction, for example trees as living beings.

“Activists and citizens worldwide are increasingly turning to courts for climate solutions, spurring innovative legal approaches and rethinking what climate justice means.”

Thanks to the leading role of the Pacific Island State of Vanuatu at the UN General Assembly, now the International Court of Justice is hearing a landmark case on climate justice – its largest case ever – to determine what countries and companies are obliged to do under international law to protect the climate and environment from human-caused greenhouse gas emissions; and to determine the legal consequences for governments, where their acts or lack of action have significantly harmed the climate and environment.

The court’s advisory opinion can be expected to influence climate-related legal action and policy for decades to come.  These legal advances compel the public and private sectors to consider and define more ambitious climate goals, offering citizens and activists new paths to enforce accountability.

What’s next for UNDP?

For UNDP, this is not only an area that requires urgent action but also a natural point of thematic convergence that brings together two of our areas of expertise: climate action and governance. UNDP is actively supporting courts in tackling these novel cases.

For example, our global strategy for environmental justice (2022) aims to increase accountability and protection of environmental rights for current and future generations, as well as promote environmental rule of law. The strategy is based on a three-pronged approach: establishing enabling legal frameworks: supporting people-centred, effective institutions; and increasing access to justice and legal empowerment.

UNDP’s Nature Pledge has a key target of strengthening environmental justice frameworks in 50 countries. This is yielding concrete results. For example, in Thailand, UNDP partnered with the Judicial Training Institute for Climate Justice training, equipping judges with climate impact insights.

By supporting innovative legal concepts, we help justice actors advocate for new legal principles like “water justice,” aiding courts in novel environmental cases. UNDP has also supported ASEAN countries with an Environmental Justice Needs Assessment.

Through its Justice Futures CoLab, UNDP advances the right to a healthy environment and addresses injustices, supporting courts in climate justice efforts. Judicial systems are becoming key players in climate action, with the potential to address issues of climate migration, Indigenous rights, financing and extreme weather liabilities.

Climate justice will also be a critical factor under the proposed loss and damage mechanism, where UNDP, with national and international partners, supports countries with taxonomy, valuation of natural assets, damage assessments and strengthen the capacities of the courts to hear and manage these cases. Social awareness and citizens’ participation on issues of climate justice is another line of engagement.

As our climate and nature related “events” intensify, so will this trend towards seeking justice, legal and financial recourse. Ensure the systems and people involved are well prepared and discerning in this relatively new arena will serve everyone, including the environment as plaintiff in the midst of it all.

Kanni Wignaraja is UN Assistant Secretary-General and UNDP Regional Director for Asia and the Pacific

Source UNDP

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Pop singer and education activist Shehzad Roy plays chess with Malala Yousafzai. Courtesy: Shehzad Roy

By Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Pakistan, Jan 13 2025 (IPS)

“She was at her brilliant best, speaking fearlessly and boldly about the treatment of women by the Afghan Taliban, robbing an entire generation of girls their future, and how they want to erase them from society,” said educationist and one of the speakers, Baela Raza Jamil, referring to the speech by Nobel Laureate and education activist Malala Yousafzai.

Jamil heads Idara-e-Taleem-o-Aagahi, an organization promoting progressive education.

Malala addressed the second day of a two-day international conference organized by the Pakistan Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training (MoFE&PT) on January 11 and 12, to discuss the challenges and opportunities for girls’ education in Muslim communities.

“They are violators of human rights, and no cultural or religious excuse can justify them,” said Malala. “Let’s not legitimize them.”

Pop singer and education activist Shehzad Roy was equally impressed.

Roy said, “When she speaks, she speaks from the heart.”

It has been a little over three years since the Taliban banned secondary education for girls in Afghanistan on September 17, shortly after their return to power in August 2021. In 2022, the Taliban put a ban on women studying in colleges, and then in December 2024, this was extended to include women studying nursing, midwifery and dentistry.

In October 2012, at 15, Malala survived a Taliban assassination attempt for advocating girls’ education in Mingora, Pakistan. She was flown to England for treatment and has since settled there with her family while facing continued Taliban threats.

Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy, a university professor and columnist, acknowledged that the treatment of girls and women in Afghanistan was essentially “primitive and barbaric,” but emphasized that “before the Pakistani government takes on the mantle of being their [Afghan women’s] liberator, there are laws relating to women (in Pakistan) that need to be changed and anti-women practices that need to be dismantled.”

Syani Saheliyan project, which helped nearly 50,000 adolescent girls by providing academic, life skills, vocational training, and technology-driven support to reintegrate Courtesy: Idara-e-Taleem-o-Aagahi

Dismantling many of the colonial laws and legal systems that perpetuate gender inequality at both personal and societal levels was also pointed out by Jamil, who spoke about the important role women can play in peacebuilding. But that was only possible, she said, when society can promote education and lifelong learning without discrimination.

“In Malala, we have a living example of a contemporary young student’s lived experience of responding to deadly violence by becoming a unique peacebuilder,” said Jamil in her speech to the conference.

This high-profile conference deliberately kept low-key till the last minute for “security reasons gathered 150 delegates, including ministers, ambassadors, scholars, and representatives from 44 Muslim and allied countries, as well as international organizations like UNESCO, UNICEF, the World Bank, and the Saudi-funded Muslim World League.

Hoodbhoy, however, said the summit was “solely purposed to break Pakistan’s isolation with the rest of the world and shore up a wobbly government desperate for legitimacy.”

While some Indian organizations were represented, Afghanistan, despite being invited, was conspicuously absent.

This did not go unnoticed.

“The silence of the Taliban, the world’s worst offender when it comes to girls’ education, was deafening,” pointed out Michael Kugelman, director of the Washington D.C.-based Wilson Center’s South Asia Institute. Given the strained relationship between Pakistan and Afghanistan, he said the former may have wanted this conference to bring attention to the Taliban’s horrific record on girls’ education.

“And it has succeeded, to a degree, especially with an iconic figure like Malala using the conference as a platform to condemn gender apartheid in Afghanistan under the Taliban.”

Yusafzai was glad that the conference was taking place in Pakistan. “Because there is still a tremendous amount of work that is ahead of us, so that every Pakistani girl can have access to her education,” she said, referring to the 12 million out-of-school girls.

Kugelman credited Pakistan as the host for not trying “to hide its own failures” on the education front. “It was important that Prime Minister Sharif acknowledged the abysmal state of girls’ education in Pakistan in his conference speech,” he said.

With 26 million out-of-school children in Pakistan, 53 percent of whom are girls, the summit seemed to be in line with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s declaration of an education emergency in Pakistan last year, vowing to “bring them [unschooled children] back to school.”

“The PM is rightly worried about out-of-school kids, but I’m more worried about those who complete ten years of education and fail to develop critical thinking,” said Roy, commenting on the summit. The pop singer has been a very vocal education activist for over two decades.

Hoodbhoy had similar thoughts. “Had there been serious intent to educate girl children, the more effective and far cheaper strategies would be to make coeducation compulsory at the primary and early secondary levels to increase school availability and design curriculum to educate and inform girls (and boys) rather than simply brainwash,” he said.

Pop singer and education activist Shehzad Roy is concerned with the quality of education. Courtesy: Shehzad Roy

Roy stated that Yousafzai has consistently emphasized the importance of quality education. With just 150 government training institutions in Pakistan, he said there was an urgent need for reform through public-private partnerships. He also noted that many private schools hire unqualified teachers and advocated for a teaching license, like medical licenses.

Since forming the Zindagi Trust in 2003, Roy has been advocating for better quality education in public schools. He has also adopted two government girl’s schools in Karachi and turned them around, providing meals to nursery children and teaching chess and musical instruments, both unheard of in public schools, especially for girls.

The Prime Minister acknowledged that enrolling 26 million students in school was a challenging task, with “inadequate infrastructure, safety concerns, as well as deeply entrenched societal norms” acting as barriers, and stated that the real challenge was the “will” to do it.

For 34 years, Jamil has raised questions about the design and process of education in Pakistan through annual reports. She believes that bringing 26 million children back to school is less challenging than ensuring “foundational learning” for those already enrolled. “Forty-five percent of children aged 5-16 fail in reading, comprehension, and arithmetic,” she told IPS. Along with improved funding and well-equipped school infrastructure, Jamil was also concerned about what she termed a runaway population.

Lamenting on a “lack of imagination to solve the education crisis” within the government, she said there was potential to achieve so much more. Jamil’s own organisation’s 2018 Syani Saheliyan project helped nearly 50,000 adolescent girls (ages 9-19) in South Punjab who had dropped out of school. It provided academics, life skills, vocational training, and technology-driven support to reintegrate them into education. The project was recognized by HundrEd Innovation in 2023.

Even Dr. Fozia Parveen, assistant professor at Aga Khan University’s Institute for Educational Development, would like the government to think outside the box and find a “middle ground” by including local wisdom in modern education.

“Instead of western-led education in an already colonial education system, perhaps a more grassroots approach using local methods of education can be looked into,” she suggested, adding: “There is so much local wisdom and knowledge that we will lose if we continue to be inspired by and adopt foreign systems. An education that is localized with all modern forms and technologies is necessary for keeping up with the world,” she said.

Further, Parveen, who looks at environmental and climate education, said “more skill-based learning would be needed in the times to come, which would require updated curriculum and teachers that are capacitated to foster those skills.”

The two-day International Conference on Girls’ Education in Muslim Communities ended with the signing of the Islamabad Declaration, recognizing education as a fundamental right protected by divine laws, Islamic teachings, international charters, and national constitutions. Muslim leaders pledged to ensure girls’ right to education, “without limitations” and “free from restrictive conditions,” in line with Sharia. The declaration highlighted girls’ education as a religious and societal necessity, key to empowerment, stable families, and global peace, while addressing extremism and violence.

It condemned extremist ideologies, fatwas, and cultural norms hindering girls’ education and perpetuating societal biases. Leaders committed to offering scholarships for girls affected by poverty and conflict and developing programs for those with special needs to ensure inclusivity.

The declaration concluded by affirming “it will not be a temporary appeal, an empty declaration, or simply a symbolic stance. Rather, it will represent a qualitative transformation in advocating for girls’ education—bringing prosperity to every deprived girl and to every community in dire need of the contributions of both
its sons and daughters equally”.

A permanent committee was urged to oversee the implementation of these outcomes.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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