Beyond Legal Opinions: What Climate Justice Must Mean for the Caribbean
By Dorain Clarke*
The Caribbean is a region defined by resilience, yet daily life across our Small Island Developing States (SIDS) is shaped by an ongoing struggle to survive forces we did little to create. Rising seas, stronger storms, and creeping environmental threats erode our shores while global systems look on. As the International Court of Justice (ICJ) prepares to deliver its historic advisory opinion on states’ responsibilities in addressing climate change, we are reminded that legal rulings alone are not enough. For the Caribbean, true climate justice must reach far beyond the courtroom. It must confront the layered environmental, economic, and social inequities that threaten our future.
The Caribbean’s Unequal Exposure to a Global Crisis
Though our nations are among the least responsible for the greenhouse gas emissions that drive climate change, we face some of its most severe consequences. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), low-lying island states face disproportionate exposure to rising sea levels, coral bleaching, and more frequent extreme weather events. These climate impacts compound existing structural vulnerabilities, such as small economic bases, external debt, and dependency on imported goods.
This disparity highlights a deeper injustice: that those who have contributed least to the crisis are forced to carry its heaviest burdens. And while international climate frameworks have acknowledged this imbalance through principles like “Common but Differentiated Responsibilities,” enforcement remains weak. For Caribbean nations, the ICJ’s opinion presents an opportunity not just to affirm legal obligations, but to push for meaningful accountability.
Contradictions in Climate Governance
Recent developments underscore the contradictions at the heart of global climate action. Ahead of COP30, swathes of the Amazon rainforest – an ecological system critical for global carbon regulation – were cleared to host climate talks. This act, while symbolically advancing climate diplomacy, simultaneously undermined one of the planet’s most important natural defenses against climate instability.
Such contradictions are not merely symbolic. They reinforce a dangerous pattern in which short-term optics override long-term planetary health. For Caribbean states whose well-being is intimately tied to the health of global commons like the Amazon, these actions carry real consequences. As Nepstad et al. argue, the erosion of rainforest resilience is directly linked to increased climate variability across the tropics, with downstream effects on storm patterns and precipitation in the Caribbean basin.
This example illustrates why the ICJ must go further than focusing on emissions. Climate justice requires confronting state-sanctioned actions such as deforestation, extractive industries, and land-use change that undermine planetary resilience.
The Sargassum Crisis
Not all climate-related disasters are sudden or dramatic. Since 2011, the Caribbean has experienced increasingly frequent influxes of Sargassum seaweed, a phenomenon fueled by warming ocean temperatures and nutrient-rich runoff from the Amazon Basin. Once benign, Sargassum now washes ashore in massive quantities, smothering coral reefs, threatening marine biodiversity, and releasing toxic hydrogen sulfide gas that endangers coastal residents.
Despite the staggering costs, Barbados alone reported tourism-related losses exceeding US$5.2 million in a single year. This slow-onset crisis remains absent from most international climate discussions. It is not declared a disaster, nor does it qualify for emergency assistance or climate finance. Yet, its effects are devastating.
This silence reveals a blind spot in global climate governance. The ICJ must recognize that climate harm is not only caused by typhoons and wildfires. Chronic, creeping disasters like Sargassum must be included in the legal definition of loss and damage especially when they are linked to upstream environmental degradation.
Early Warning Systems: The Right to Know and Act
As the climate crisis accelerates, timely information can mean the difference between life and death. Early Warning Systems (EWS) are essential tools for reducing disaster risk, yet many Caribbean nations lack access to the technology and infrastructure needed to maintain them. Funding cuts and reliance on foreign data providers such as the recent suspension of U.S. hurricane reconnaissance flights, leave SIDS dangerously exposed.
According to the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, effective early warning systems can reduce mortality by up to 60% (UNDRR). Yet access to these tools remains highly uneven. The ICJ must recognize the right to early warning as a fundamental component of climate justice. Wealthier nations with advanced forecasting capabilities have a legal and moral obligation to share this data, support capacity building, and ensure that vulnerable nations are not left to face storms in the dark.
Climate Justice Demands Financial Justice
Environmental injustice in the Caribbean is closely intertwined with economic inequity. SIDS are burdened by unsustainable debt, volatile markets, and an international trade system that often favors large economies at our expense. Recent studies show that rising tariffs and limited fiscal space undermine our ability to invest in climate adaptation and disaster preparedness.
For instance, when Guyana and Jamaica faced renewed tariffs on aluminum and rum exports, national climate adaptation programs were postponed due to redirected funding priorities. These economic stressors hinder the implementation of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement, perpetuating a cycle of vulnerability and underdevelopment.
The ICJ must expand its advisory opinion to consider how financial systems, particularly trade and debt structures undermine a state’s ability to fulfill its climate obligations. Climate justice must include economic sovereignty. Without it, SIDS cannot build the resilient futures they envision.
Caribbean youth are urging the Court to take a broader and bolder stance on climate justice. We call for the recognition of slow-onset and transboundary impacts such as Sargassum influxes and global deforestation as legitimate climate harms that demand international accountability. We also emphasize that access to early warning systems must be affirmed as a legal entitlement so that vulnerable nations are not left behind when disasters strike. In addition, the importance of addressing economic barriers must be stressed by explicitly linking climate justice to fair trade practices, debt relief measures, and equitable climate finance, ensuring that Caribbean states can build the resilience they urgently need.
Conclusion
The ICJ advisory opinion could be a turning point in the global pursuit of climate justice but only if it recognizes the full complexity of what justice means for regions like the Caribbean. This is not merely a question of carbon accounting. It is a call to redress centuries of ecological and economic exploitation, to recognize the vulnerabilities imposed by structural inequality, and to ensure that those who bear the brunt of the crisis are not left behind in its resolution.
The world must understand, for the Caribbean, climate justice is not a debate. It is a demand for survival, dignity, and a future we can shape on our own terms.
*Dorain Clarke is a Jamaican national and student at the University of the West Indies. She is also the founder of Youth Climate Voice Caribbean (YCVC), a youth-led initiative based in the Caribbean that empowers young people through climate education, advocacy, and community resilience building.
DISCLAIMER: The views expressed in the symposium’s blog posts are those of the author and do not represent the views of WYCJ. Furthermore, university chapters were prepared, edited, and approved by the respective universities; WYCJ cannot guarantee the level of scientific and legal inquiry, nor the content of blog posts.