Young people around the world are taking their governments to court for failing to mitigate climate change — this has happened in the United States of America, China, the United Kingdom, Peruvia, Portugal and Sweden, among many others. Their efforts to hold elected governments accountable on climate change — an existential crisis — have now been endorsed by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child: it has said that all countries have a legal obligation to protect children from environmental degradation — including the regulation of business enterprises — and to allow underage citizens to seek legal recourse on their failure to do so. The committee’s opinion is not legally binding. But it is still significant because it is based on the most widely ratified international treaty, the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Although international treaties have not often been used in climate litigation, that seems to be changing. The International Court of Justice is currently weighing whether countries can be sued under existing international conventions for failing to rein in fossil fuel emissions. These steps are encouraging because the dearth of legally punitive elements in statutes on climate action allows stakeholders to dodge their commitments to climate action. The absence of deterrents also stymies the creation of a level playing field. The United States of America, the biggest polluter in the world, could thus walk away and then re-enter the Paris pact without being penalised for its flip-flop.

However, no international law can be created and given teeth without the consent of governments that would be subject to its jurisdiction. This can be a formidable challenge. How many nation-states are willing to own up to their culpability? The possibility of the State wriggling out of its environmental pledges cannot be ruled out. One antidote against this could be far more intensive campaigns by young voters. Research has found that rising ‘climate literacy’ is bringing more and more young people out on to the streets, turning such movements political. But this solidarity is far from even: the West, with its higher levels of awareness and mobilisation mechanisms, is seeing a disproportionate share of climate activism that is political. This sensitivity needs to be uniform and global. Only then would demands for State accountability on climate intervention acquire a universal dimension.