Last month, a group of 10 Australians filed a communication before the United Nations Human Rights Committee asking for a declaration that their country’s support for fossil fuel production violates the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Among other remedies, the complainants in Poelina et al v Australia are seeking a recommendation that Australia implement a plan to phase out coal and gas exports.

Whether the claim gets anywhere remains to be seen. But it could be a harbinger of things to come.

The Poelina claim draws extensively on last year’s landmark advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice on liability for carbon emissions. It invokes the UN court’s treatment of climate change as a global, cumulative, and transboundary problem for which states can be held responsible across generations.

The ICJ opinion originated in a 2023 request by the UN General Assembly following lobbying by Vanuatu, an island nation whose very existence is threatened by rising sea levels. It concluded that there is a duty under customary environmental law to ensure the protection of the environment from anthropogenic greenhouse gas omissions, and that a breach of these obligations constitutes an internationally wrongful act, for which remedies can include cessation, non-repetition and reparations.