Small Island Developing States’ Use of Courts to Fight for Environmental Security

Since 2024, two international courts have issued advisory opinions on state obligations regarding climate change based upon requests spearheaded by Small Island Developing States (SIDS) in the Pacific. These states clearly see international courts as an important strategy to fight for environmental security. In this paper, we analyze why international courts are attractive to Pacific SIDS by exploring how small states have an outsized impact, exploring domestic parallels showing why courts are important for groups to ensure their rights when other venues are unavailable, and examining these recent cases showing how Pacific SIDS utilized creative strategies to institute proceedings.