The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague began hearing countries’ statements yesterday in a case about government obligations on climate change, the Guardian reports. The outlet continues: “The hearing is the culmination of years of campaigning by a group of Pacific island law students and diplomacy spearheaded by Vanuatu…Over the next two weeks, the court will hear statements from 98 countries, including wealthy developed states with the greatest historical responsibility for the climate emergency, such as the UK and Russia, and states that have contributed very little to global greenhouse gas emissions but stand to bear the brunt of their impact, including Bangladesh and Sudan as well as Pacific island countries.” Yesterday, the court heard about the disproportionate impacts of climate change on Pacific island states such as Vanuatu, according to the newspaper. It quotes Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu’s special envoy for climate change and environment, telling the court that responsibility for climate change lies with “a handful of readily identifiable states”. However, the newspaper says that “Germany and Saudi Arabia contended that they had no obligations beyond [the Paris Agreement]”. The Guardian also reports that “Australia has been accused of undermining its Pacific neighbours in a landmark international legal case after it argued that high-emitting countries are not obliged to act on the climate crisis beyond their non-binding commitments to the 2015 Paris Agreement”. The Hill reports that after the two-week hearing, the court will “issue an opinion on states’ obligations regarding climate change”. It continues: “The court’s opinions are not legally binding, and neither China nor the US fully acknowledges its authority. But if the court sides with Vanuatu and its allies, it could provide a major precedent for climate change-related lawsuits.” BBC News adds: “The idea to get the court to issue a legal opinion was originally proposed by law students in Fiji five years ago. It was then taken up by Vanuatu, an island nation with bitter experience of the impacts of rising temperatures and sea levels.” EuroNews and Le Monde also cover the case. 

The Caribbean island of Barbados has “successfully completed” a debt swap that should generate $125m to make water and sewage systems more resilient to climate change, Bloomberg reports. The outlet continues: “A unit of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce arranged a sustainability-linked loan, or SLL, backed by $300m in guarantees from the European Investment Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, the Washington-based multilateral lender said in a statement on its website on Monday. The proceeds of the deal are being used to replace some of the Caribbean island’s most expensive debt.” Reuters explains that under the deal, Barbados will “invest $165m in water infrastructure, food security and environmental protection to help the Caribbean island adapt to the damaging effects of climate change”. Another Reuters article says that in a debt swap, “a country buys back more expensive debt and replaces it with cheaper debt, usually with the help of a development bank”. The savings are then used for climate resilience and adaptation projects, it says. The outlet lists countries that have completed swaps in recent years. 

A group of countries are calling for binding global targets to cut plastic production, after talks in South Korea last week “ended in failure”, the Guardian reports. The paper continues: “More than 100 countries supported a draft text that included legally binding global reductions in plastic production and phasing out certain chemicals and single-use plastic products. But the resistance of countries including Saudi Arabia, Iran and Russia to production reductions, according to statements in their submissions to the treaty talks, led negotiators to concede defeat…In response to the failure of the talks, countries pushing for production cuts continued to call for legally binding reductions. Eighty-five countries and political blocs including the UK, the EU, Spain, Germany, Mexico and Greece signed a declaration committing to stand up for ambition in the treaty…The ambition countries said the treaty must contain binding provisions for a global target to reduce the production of primary plastic polymers to sustainable levels.” Separately, Climate Home News says: “One clear, prevailing narrative was borrowed straight from UN climate change negotiations: a vocal minority of defiant, well-coordinated petrostates had killed off the majority’s efforts to clinch an ambitious agreement to end plastic pollution.” Other outlets including BusinessGreen, the Independent, EuroNews and NBC News also report on the outcomes of the talks.

In comment, Bloomberg columnist David Fickling calls the “failure” of the plastics negotiations “a sign of how the entire edifice of environmental diplomacy is creaking”. He adds: “The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies have acted as wreckers in recent environmental conferences. That’s hardly a surprise, given their economic dependence on fossil fuels that are the most direct threat to the global environment…And yet that thinking absolves other countries of the responsibility to seriously consider the radicalism that goals like zeroing out emissions and ending plastic pollution will require.” He argues that plastics are “an even harder nut to crack” than climate change, as we have not yet found a viable alternative. Separately, Prof Steven Fletcher and Dr Samuel Winton from the University of Portsmouth write in the Conversation that a treaty on plastics is possible if countries can agree on three points – finance, plastic production and safety.

Carmaker Stellantis has “won a commitment from the US government for up to a $7.5bn loan to help build two electric vehicle battery plants in Kokomo, Indiana”, the Associated Press reports. At full capacity, the plants will produce enough batteries to supply about 670,000 vehicles per year, according to the newswire. It adds that the loan announcement comes one day after the company confirmed that CEO Carlos Tavares is stepping down. The Times has published a feature on why Tavares stepped down. It says that Tavares’ legacy includes his decision to shut down a van-making plant in Luton, putting 1,000 jobs at risk. It continues: “Tavares dressed up this decision as part of his row with the UK government over its failure to incentivise sales of electric cars and vans and at the same time impose punitive sales targets on manufacturers under the zero-emission vehicle mandate. This was, perhaps, disingenuous.” The Daily Telegraph says that “Stellantis, like rivals such as Renault and Volkswagen, is battling for market share around the world, with low-cost Chinese brands racing ahead in the electric vehicle (EV) segment”. Analysis in the Guardian also mentions Chinese competition over EV production. The Financial Times Lex column says “a driverless Stellantis cannot find a route back to success”. 

In other US news, the Guardian reports that “Donald Trump’s allies have fired the opening salvoes of his coming administration’s attack on the Environmental Protection Agency”. According to the newspaper, the Republicans want to remove “integrity policies”, which include standards for “objectivity and accuracy in scientific information”.

A “blue book” outlining the “strategic roadmap for future development” of a national unified power market was launched by the China Electricity Council in Beijing, industry news outlet International Energy Net reports. It quotes Song Hongkun, deputy director of the National Energy Administration (NEA), saying a unified power market is crucial for “deepening power sector reforms” and promoting the energy transition. Energy news outlet BJX News also covers the document’s release, which states that development of a unified power market will occur in “three phases”: “convergence” of provincial mechanisms”, “participation” of large-scale renewable energy bases and “market adaptation” to the energy transition. Industry news outlet China Energy Net reports that Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) head Zhuang Jinlong, in a meeting of the ministry’s carbon peaking and carbon neutrality leading small group, said that China must “further improve industrial green low-carbon development system and policies”. China has established an “innovation consortium” for carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS), China Energy Net reports.

State-run newspaper China Daily carries an opinion article by Fu Cong, an associate researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences’ Institute of European Studies (not to be confused with China’s former ambassador to the EU), arguing that the EU must now decide “whether to be tough on China or solve the contradictions caused by green transformation by jointly promoting the reform of WTO green trade rules”. State-supporting newspaper Global Times publishes an opinion article under the byline GT Voice saying that the US imposing “dumping tariffs” on solar products from Southeast Asian countries “is unlikely to significantly undermine the region’s production networks”. Reuters reports that Malaysia has urged Chinese companies to “refrain” from using the country as “a base to ‘rebadge’ products” to avoid US tariffs amid “concerns” of a trade war.

Elsewhere, Xinhua quotes foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning saying that China has made “significant progress” on controlling desertification, making a “substantial contribution to global desertification control”. A new policy on forestry and grassland administration has “relaxed project approval requirements to prioritise economic development”, causing “concerns…over the risks of sidelining environmental protection”, business news outlet Caixin reports. State broadcaster CGTN reports China’s “first overseas atmospheric background station” began operations in Antarctica, helping support “global” research into climate change.

Prof Michael Mann, director of the Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media at the University of Pennsylvania, writes in the Los Angeles Times that limiting warming to 1.5C is “technologically feasible”, but that “the political obstacles seem nearly insurmountable”. He says the “reverberations of the unfavorable US developments were apparent” at the recent COP29 climate summit, where “polluters” were “emboldened”. Mann says that COP29 was “the second fossil-fuel-happy conference in a row” and argues that procedural changes are needed to “help get COP on track”. He writes that we “need to fill the vacuum created by the loss of American leadership”, and says that “China appears ready to step up to the plate”.

Meanwhile, Khaled Diab, the communications director at NGO Carbon Market Watch, writes in African Arguments that “COP29 opened carbon markets to cowboys when a sheriff is needed”. Diab argues that the new rules for carbon markets “risk undermining efforts to rein in emissions rather than advancing them”. He continues: “Under the new framework, countries face no real repercussions if they fail to abide by the rules.” He concludes that “in the absence of better top-down regulation, the integrity of individual actors and active scrutiny from third parties will be make-or-break features of these markets”. In related comment, Pamela Wu, a partner at law firm Morgan Lewis, writes for Reuters that the adoption of carbon markets standards at COP29 “represents significant progress toward the operation of a global carbon market, which is expected to increase confidence in the carbon markets, encourage continued investment in carbon removal and reduction projects, and provide another platform through which carbon credits can be transacted”. Maria Elena Herrera Ugalde – coordinator for Costa Rica’s National REDD+ Strategy – writes in an article for Reuters that “women are custodians of nature – and key to improving the integrity of carbon markets”. She writes: “We strongly urge all participants in the voluntary carbon market, including private sector buyers, to raise standards around gender inclusion.”

In a comment for the Times, Robert Colvile, director of the free-market thinktank the Centre for Policy Studies, writes that UK energy secretary Ed Miliband’s “flagship policy” to deliver clean power by 2030, has “all manner of problems”. Colvile questions whether the transition to clean power will save the average household £300. He also refers to a recent report by the independent National Energy System Operator (NESO), which he says “absolutely does not prove that Miliband’s plans will make electricity cheaper”. He concludes: “Like Miliband, I think we need to decarbonise and that renewables are a great way to do that. But when we are making multibillion-pound decisions about our energy future we need to use the best available facts, rather than contorting the facts to fit with our ideological prejudices.” In related news coverage, a frontpage story in the i newspaper reports: “Energy bills are expected to rise in the short term to meet the government’s 2030 net-zero target.” It adds: “Most experts agree that transitioning to renewable energy will be better for customer bills in the long term. But some of the up-front costs in wind turbines and solar panels will be paid for through energy bills, which is expected to lead to a spike in customer costs in the short term.”

In other UK comment, the Guardian has published an editorial on Keir Starmer’s “reset”. It says: “However, an ageing Britain facing a net-zero future cannot embrace the politics of stunted ambition. The prime minister should pursue bold actions and chart new directions, rather than repackaging old ideas as innovation. Sticking to the same path will only exacerbate Britain’s challenges, not solve them.” A Daily Mail editorial also covers Starmer’s upcoming speech and says: “The new PM’s relentless talking down of the economy, a disastrous budget and reckless net-zero and electric vehicle targets that are already costing thousands of jobs, have sent business morale crashing.” Finally, David Robertson, investment and business development director with Scottish Woodland, writes in the Times that “forestry is a force for good in Scotland”.  

Ocean warming is driving the rapid loss of mass from the front of Arctic glaciers, according to a new study combining satellite data and sea temperature records. Around a third of Arctic glaciers terminate in the sea, where ice calves off in large chunks before melting into the water, contributing to sea level rise. The new study finds that “melting and calving occur almost exclusively in autumn for all types of outlet glaciers”, when ocean temperatures have reached a peak after absorbing heat during the summer. It adds that ocean temperatures “control” mass loss, whereas meltwater run-off from the surface of glaciers “appears to have little direct impact”.

A new study uses artificial intelligence techniques to analyse more than 250,000 published scientific papers examining the co-benefits and trade-offs of natural climate solutions (NCS). It finds that “global evidence on NCS co-impacts has grown approximately tenfold in three decades and some of the most abundant evidence relates to NCS that have lower mitigation potential”. The research also identifies countries “with high carbon mitigation potential but a relatively weak body of evidence on NCS co-impacts”.