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The young activist who has pushed for six years for international law to clarify the duty of larger nations to protect smaller ones from climate change sees new hope in this week’s UN ruling. By Cheyne Anderson.
The UN’s historic decision on climate accountability
Solomon Islander Cynthia Houniuhi was eight years old when she first became aware of the climate crisis. During a trip to Fanalei Island with her father to visit relatives, Houniuhi noticed there were no children playing soccer on the beach. Some of the houses that dotted the shore were empty, while others appeared to be standing in the water itself.
“I didn’t know the term climate change, but I saw the evidence,” says Houniuhi.
Houniuhi was witnessing the abandonment of Fanalei, where about 80 per cent of structures have been washed away by rising sea levels. At last count, more than three quarters of the island’s population have relocated. The once idyllic village is today a ghost town of abandoned stilt houses, inundated wells and barren farmland. And Houniuhi, now 29, is an assistant lecturer of environmental law and the president of advocacy group Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change.
Solomon Islands, she says, “contribute almost nothing to climate change, but they are the ones that lose their homes.
“It was like a fuel that started a fire in me. It’s cheesy but it made me want to be something that could really impact my people in a more practical way.”
Houniuhi speaks to The Saturday Paper from a hotel in The Hague, where she flew to witness the delivery this week of a landmark International Court of Justice (ICJ) advisory opinion on climate change. The opinion sought to clarify the obligations of states under international law to protect smaller states and individuals from climate harms, and the legal consequences if states fail to do so. On Wednesday, the court found reparations in the form of restitution or compensation could be owed if a state fails to protect the climate from greenhouse gas emissions.
The finding is the reflection of six years of work by Houniuhi and a group of former classmates at the University of the South Pacific, who first came up with the proposal in 2019. The journey of the advisory opinion from a campus in Port Vila to The Hague is illustrative of the David and Goliath struggle between the small nations most vulnerable to global temperature rises and the large economies that emit the most greenhouse gases. Experts say the opinion is a sign that the law is finally catching up to the problem of man-made climate change – and Australia is on notice.
This unanimous ruling by 15 judges for the first time explicitly identifies the production and consumption of fossil fuels and the granting of exploration licences and subsidies to the industry among failures to take appropriate action on climate. States are also liable for the actions of the corporate sector. Such failures are an “international wrongful act” under human rights law and the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, among others relating to the atmosphere and environment.
“This is the kind of world historic legal decision that will be talked about for centuries,” says Dr Wesley Morgan, a research associate at the Institute for Climate Risk and Response at UNSW Sydney and a fellow with the Climate Council of Australia.
“This means governments must do more than set an emissions target. It certainly has huge implications for Australia as one of the world’s largest exporters of coal and gas.”
Jacqueline Peel, director of Melbourne Climate Futures at the University of Melbourne, says the UN opinion is significant not only as the first time the world court has deliberated on a climate issue but also for the unprecedented number of countries involved in the process. Ninety-one, including Australia, made submissions to the ICJ.
“Interest in this case is very high,” says Peel. “There’s a huge gap between what the science says is needed and what countries are promising to do through their policy actions. [The opinion] helps unlock this dilemma to give countries really clear signals that they need to be speeding up their processes.”
Cynthia Houniuhi hopes it will act as a blueprint for holding polluters accountable and accelerating climate action.
“In the Pacific, when there’s uncertainty in terms of customs or culture, we go to our chiefs, and what they say brings clarity and harmony to our people. That’s the same world view we’d like to present here … we’re missing that sacred authority.”
Although the opinion itself is non-binding, Houniuhi says, “the laws that it clarifies are legally binding. So there’s potential in that.”
Morgan says the implications of this ruling will reverberate in courts, parliaments and boardrooms the world over.
Morgan cites the recent Federal Court dismissal of a class action brought against the Australian government by Torres Strait Islanders Uncle Paul Kabai and Uncle Pabai Pabai. The Uncles had argued that the government’s failure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions amounted to a breach of its duty of care. They have pledged to continue the fight.
“It is possible that in an appeal, the court – perhaps a full bench of the Federal Court or the High Court of Australia – would be able to give weight to the advisory opinion,” says Morgan.
At the 2022 Pacific Islands Forum, the Labor government endorsed the recommendation to seek an advisory opinion on climate change from the UN General Assembly. However, Australia’s written submission to the ICJ in August 2024, prepared by the then attorney-general Mark Dreyfus, argued against further clarification of the state’s obligations.
“They took the position that everything they have to do on climate change under international law is really just contained in the Paris Agreement, and according to the terms of the Paris Agreement, Australia is doing its bit,” says Peel.
The ICJ ultimately rejected that argument. Morgan says Australia can no longer rely on a narrow definition of international law obligations as a “get out of jail free” card, particularly in regard to fossil fuel exports. The gap between Australia’s climate rhetoric and action has also been criticised by Vanuatu’s minister for climate change adaptation, Ralph Regenvanu, who helped spearhead the campaign for the advisory opinion. Regenvanu wrote in 2023 that the Pacific’s ability to adapt to climate change is “made impossible by Australia’s hypocritical gas expansion plans”.
Speaking on the ruling to the ABC, Regenvanu said Pacific nations now have greater leverage at negotiations such as the COP31 climate change conference – which Australia is still vying to host in 2026. Regenvanu also expects that litigation may be “an option” in future against nations such as Australia that are now recognised to be committing wrongful acts.
Vanuatu is responsible for about 0.0016 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions but faces a disproportionately high risk of extreme weather events fuelled by climate change. In 2023, the CSIRO found that cyclones hitting the island nation are reducing in frequency but increasing in intensity. Each extreme weather event currently costs Vanuatu about 60 per cent of its GDP.
It was the office of then foreign affairs minister Ralph Regenvanu that first responded to letters written by Cynthia Houniuhi and 27 of her classmates studying law at the University of the South Pacific. Houniuhi says the advisory opinion campaign arose from a shared dream of doing something “really big and ambitious”. Inspired by Palau’s failed attempt in 2012, the students took up the mantle for a renewed push. They formed their action group to take their idea off-campus.
Regenvanu recalled being impressed by their initiative, telling the ABC in 2022, “I went to the same school when I did my degree, so I knew where they were coming from.”
“From then on we were always working with the Vanuatu government,” says Houniuhi. “The Pacific Island students covered the civil society front. The Vanuatu government covered the political front.”
Three years later, with the endorsement of the Pacific Islands Forum, the students went global with their initiative, engaging about 1500 civil society groups across 130 countries to gather support for the request at the UN General Assembly.
After six years of campaigning, Cynthia Houniuhi was equal parts nervous and excited as she awaited Wednesday’s delivery.
As the advisory opinion was read out, Houniuhi says, she felt “happily exhausted”.
“It’s cost us our youth,” she says of the campaign. “But our focus is on what it will mean for our people, our islands and our homes.
“I love my people. I don’t think I’ve been born a Solomon Islander by mistake, because those are the people that need our help … I like to see this as the end of a chapter. But if you look in a book, there’s many chapters. So this is also the beginning of a new journey.”
A spokesperson for Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen tells The Saturday Paper, “We will now carefully consider the court’s opinion.”
This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on July 26, 2025 as "From Port Vila to The Hague".
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