The Trump administration’s attempt to sink a U.N. resolution requiring countries to act on the climate crisis has led to cuts to the proposal but not eliminated it entirely, according to the small Pacific island country leading the effort.
The United States has demanded that Vanuatu, an archipelago in the South Pacific, abandon its draft UN resolution calling on the world to implement a landmark ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) last year that countries could face paying reparations if they fail to curb the climate crisis.
Vanuatu, one of several Pacific island countries that consider themselves existentially threatened by the climate crisis despite having done little to cause it, said it had to remove sections of its proposed resolution in the hope that a scaled-down version could be adopted at the UN in a vote later this month.
“For the Trump administration to actively intervene in the market to stop the phasing out of fossil fuels is very frustrating, it goes beyond what you would expect a government to do,” said Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu’s climate change adaptation minister.
“It’s going to have a huge damaging effect on the world and future generations.”
The resolution to comply with the opinion issued by the ICJ is non-binding but “could pose a significant threat to American industry,” the Trump administration said in guidance to American embassies and consulates last month.
“President Trump has conveyed a very clear message: that the UN and many nations around the world have gone wildly off course, exaggerating climate change into the world’s greatest threat,” the US State Department cable adds.
This opposition, along with that from other major fossil fuel producers such as Saudi Arabia and Russia, has resulted in the proposed UN resolution being watered down.
The resolution previously called on countries to submit a record of the “loss and damage” they suffer from the impacts of an overheating world, such as storms, floods and droughts. This damage accounting was strongly opposed by the United States, the world’s second largest carbon emitter, which has long feared legal liability for its pollution, and has now been abandoned.
However, a new version of the draft resolution shared for debate this week still outlines that UN member countries “fully comply with their obligations under international law with regard to climate change” in line with the ICJ ruling, and limit the rise in global temperature to 1.5°C above pre-industrial times through “a rapid, fair and quantified phase-out of the production and use of fossil fuels.”
Regenvanu said: “The United States asked us to withdraw the resolution, which is disappointing, and rejected the language.”
He added: “We hope that the compromise on loss and damage recording means some of that other language remains. It’s worrying, but we don’t think it will derail the resolution entirely, and I hope it passes with more than a simple majority.”
Vanuatu has enlisted the support of a coalition of countries, including the Netherlands, Colombia, Barbados, Kenya, Jamaica and the Philippines, to push for a non-binding resolution. But opposition to the resolution has been “more effective than those who support it,” Regenvanu said, adding that the EU “has not been as helpful as we had hoped.”
However, it is the United States that represents the main threat to the proposal and to global climate cooperation in general. Trump has told other world leaders that clean energy is a “scam,” dismissed climate science as a “scam,” and urged countries to stay stuck with fossil fuels that are dangerously warming the planet.
His administration has broken environmental rules to “drill, baby, drill” in the United States while making extraordinary interventions internationally, such as withdrawing the United States from the founding UN climate treaty and taking control of Venezuela’s oil industry after taking over the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro.
Trump has sought to sabotage global initiatives aimed at reducing planet-warming pollution, such as a tax on shipping emissions, and sharply criticized the International Energy Agency for factoring in the climate crisis in its energy outlook scenarios.
Unlike the carbon emissions tax planned for shipping, Vanuatu’s UN resolution would not impose any specific tariffs or regulations on countries like the United States and will likely be ignored by the Trump administration if passed.
But the resolution represents the “beginning of the world building a body of law for when policies are different and the world takes more serious action on climate,” said Noah Gordon, an expert on global climate policy at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Judges and lawyers will see this as the basis for an international climate law that has teeth.”
He added: “The Trump administration has tried to blow up climate diplomacy, but other countries are still trying to move forward. We are seeing a big divide between countries that produce fossil fuels and those that consume them.”
While the world’s attention is focused on Iran after the attack by the United States and Israel, following other armed conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, the main threat for many countries is the climate crisis, said Regenvanu, noting that a tropical cyclone in 2015 wiped out 64% of Vanuatu’s GDP.
More recent storms, fueled by higher ocean and air temperatures, have caused similar economic and humanitarian catastrophes in other countries. These disasters are also taking an increasing toll in the United States, where home insurance is becoming unavailable in some places due to a growing onslaught of extreme weather events.
“This is the biggest threat to our existence, security and livelihood,” Regenvanu said.
“The world needs to be brave and move away from entrenched fossil fuel interests and find a way forward for future generations. But the state of multilateralism is quite dire right now, it is at one of the lowest points in history. This is also reflected in the climate negotiations.”
A US State Department spokesperson said the US asked Vanuatu to “withdraw this performative resolution which, if adopted, could pose a major threat to US industry.
“The United States did not support the request for this ICJ advisory opinion and has serious concerns about its conclusions,” the spokesperson added.
“Furthermore, the ICJ’s advisory opinion does not provide a basis for the demands included in the draft resolution, which could have broader legal and economic impacts.”
