ID: 2053
Presenting Author: Isabela Bicalho
Session: 596 - Climate Impact Assessments After the ICJ's Climate Change Opinion
Status: pending
The ICJ’s 2025 Advisory Opinion redefines environmental law, making Climate Impact Assessments a legal duty that shifts state responsibility from reactive harm control to anticipatory governance.
The ICJ’s 2025 Advisory Opinion on climate change reconfigures the normative foundations of international environmental law. By articulating due diligence through the principles of prevention, precaution, and intergenerational equity, the Court shifts international responsibility from a reactive framework of compensation to an anticipatory regime based on knowledge and foresight. Within this transformation, the Climate Impact Assessment (CIA) emerges as the legal mechanism through which States materialize their obligation to prevent significant harm to the climate system.
This article argues that the CIA now constitutes a condition of legality for state conduct rather than a procedural formality. Its absence or inadequacy may amount to a breach of the duty of care under customary and human rights law. Methodologically, it adopts a doctrinal and hermeneutic analysis of the Opinion, tracing how environmental, human rights, and maritime regimes converge around a shared logic of precautionary legality.
The study concludes that the CIA operates as a juridical act of anticipation, transforming uncertainty into legal responsibility and redefining the epistemic basis of due diligence. The Advisory Opinion thus marks a paradigmatic shift: international law no longer governs harm after the fact but regulates the production of knowledge that precedes it.
Master’s student in Public International Law at the University of São Paulo, under the supervision of Professor Dr. Alberto do Amaral.