From Hamburg to The Hague: Climate Change, Advisory Opinions and the Call of Small Island States: 2025 Sir Kenneth Bailey Memorial Lecture

From Hamburg to The Hague: Climate Change, Advisory Opinions and the Call of Small Island States
2025 Sir Kenneth Bailey Memorial Lecture

Climate change is no longer a distant environmental issue; it is a defining challenge for international law and global governance. In recent years, the world’s highest judicial bodies—the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ)—have been asked to clarify the obligations of States in responding to the climate crisis. Their advisory opinions represent a significant development in international jurisprudence, shaping how customary international law, the law of the sea, and human rights norms intersect with climate obligations.

In honour of Sir Kenneth Bailey’s work in international law, HE Dr Eselealofa Apinelu argues that advisory opinions, while not binding, carry profound normative authority and may chart new pathways for climate justice and international cooperation in an era of urgent planetary crisis. In particular, this lecture will focus on how small island states including Tuvalu, drew on the international law Advisory Opinion (AO) processes to confront climate change and its impacts on small island states. The lecture will also explore the legal reasoning and implications of the twin opinions of ITLOS and ICJ, examining how they address questions of State responsibility, human rights, intergenerational equity, and the protection of the marine environment in the face of rising seas and escalating climate impacts.

Given the broader political and diplomatic significance of judicial engagement on climate change, particularly for vulnerable States whose very existence is at risk – could AOs be the new norm?

About the speaker

HE Dr Eselealofa Apinelu (Ese) is High Commissioner of Tuvalu to Fiji and Secretary General of the Commission of Small Island States on Climate Change and International Law (COSIS). She was the former Attorney-General of Tuvalu and is an indigenous Tuvaluan. Ese holds qualifications from the Australian National University, University of Tasmania, University of the South Pacific and Swinburne University of Technology. She has previous association with the University of Melbourne and its Constitutional Transformation Network (CTN) and contributed to the publication entitled Climate Change and Democracy – Insights from Asia and the Pacific, IDEA 2023.

About the lecture series

This lecture was inaugurated in 1999, at the Commemoration of the Centenary of the 1899 Hague Peace Conference. The lecture, focusing on Australia in the international legal order, honours the Fourth Dean of the Melbourne Law School, Kenneth Hamilton Bailey, who played a significant part in Australia’s contribution to the formation of the United Nations. The Melbourne Journal of International Law has co-hosted the lecture with the Melbourne Law School since 2016.