Excerpt from reuters.com
A global maritime court found on Tuesday that greenhouse gases constitute marine pollution, a major breakthrough for small island states threatened by the rise in sea levels caused by global warming.
In its first climate-related judgment, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea said emissions from fossil fuels and other planet-warming gases that are absorbed by the oceans count as marine pollution.
Its ruling – an “advisory opinion” that should nevertheless provide a precedent for cases elsewhere – also said countries must go beyond the requirements of the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement to protect the marine environment and the states that depend on it.
“What happened today was that the law and science met together in this tribunal, and both won,” said Cheryl Bazard, ambassador to the European Union of the Bahamas, one of nine Caribbean and Pacific island nations that sought the opinion.
