ICJ climate opinion has implications for food finance

In 2023, the United Nations General Assembly formally asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to issue an advisory opinion on the obligations of states with regard to climate change, under international law. The request asked for legal findings on two core questions: 

1. What are the legal responsibilities of states, with regard to climate change? 
2. What legal penalties or mechanisms for enforcement apply in case of violations? 

On Wednesday, July 23, 2025, the ICJ issued its landmark Advisory Opinion on the Obligations of States with Respect to Climate Change. The formal findings are detailed here. A concise framing of the findings reads as:

• Both customary international law and specific treaty obligations require governments to act to reduce the threat of unchecked climte disruption. 
• States have a “duty to co-operate” to ensure optimal climate crisis response and to support climate-resilient development, including through regulation of climate pollution and the production, sharing, and application of best-available science. 
• Failure to meet due diligence responsibilities can constitute a breach of international law, and groups of nations are entitled to use legal measures to enforce compliance.

The opinion also recognizes that climate change is an urgent and existential threat to humankind, to all life forms, threatening the health of planetary systems that sustain life. And, it links the legal obligation to act on climate not only to customary international law and the Climate Convention and its Paris Agreement, but also to the Biodiversity Convention, the Desertification Convention, the Vienna Ozone Layer Convention, its Montreal Protocol and Kigali Amendment, and to the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

This, together with the duty to cooperate, reinforces the call in Article 6.8 of the Paris Agreement to work “across instruments and institutional arrangements”, to ensure an integrated, holistic, and balanced overall climate response and an optimal pathway to climate-resilient sustainable development. In other words, there can be no loopholes: the obligation to act is implicit and universal, reinforced by explicit agreements, and cannot be considered met unless it is being addressed across the full landscape of national and international activity affecting Earth’s climate and biosphere, and related impacts on humankind.

The obligation to act, the duty to cooperate, and this implicit mandate to work across overlapping conventions, are all significant breakthroughs in the development of international climate law. The Advisory Opinion also provides an important breakthrough in terms of the legal links between climate policy and the ocean. Specifically, the opinion provides legal guidance regarding the obligation to support improved outcomes throughout the climate system, including in the ocean, linking to the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, and the goal of eliminating pollution and protecting biodiversity and ecosystems in the marine environment. 

Ocean-related climate action is not limited to what happens in or on the water, or on islands or in coastal regions. It begins far upstream, wherever pollution might originate. Because climate pollution includes the release of carbon-based heat-trapping gases from degraded forests and landscapes, this makes land use, agriculture, and food systems practices an important area of constructive action for reducing climate-related risk to marine ecosystems and disruption of ocean currents, habitat, and climate-shaping dynamics.

The ICJ opinion, then, points to a future in which all nations work not only to jointly eliminate impacts and risks driven by climate disruption, but in which investments in land-based activities are deliberately oriented toward supporting a healthy ocean, as an anchor of Earth’s climate system. 

This means food-related finance should be expected to seek opportunities in and support expansion of: 

1. Zero-emissions farming practices;
2. Regenerative land use and agriculture; 
3. Agroecological practices that restore ecosystems and support rich, resilient biodiversity; 
4. Protection and clean water quality of watersheds; 
5. Data systems and multidimensional metrics that track and support delivery of enhanced soil ecology, soil carbon, and soil moisture; 
6. Tracking and labeling systems that allow consumers to choose more nutritious, more sustainable products;
7. Storage, transport, and logistics, that reduce, instead of expanding the overall release of global heating emissions;
8. Sustainable fisheries, including the establishment and upkeep of marine protected areas that ensure marine ecosystems are not degraded by human interventions; 
9. Nutrition-based indicators that steer investment, trace improved health outcomes, and help to create fiscal space for further investment in deep regenerative practices and climate benefits.
10. Cooperative de-risking and co-investment strategies that mobilize more capital more quickly and allow for disaggregating large financial flows, to support localized benefits.

All of these areas of climate-smart food systems innovation and investment can help to build market share for sustainably produced, regenerative, nutritious food items, expanding the mainstream practice and creating cost parity, so better products out-compete those that create hidden costs.

The Climate Action and Food Systems Alliance (CAFSA) and the Good Food Finance Network will be following up with further information about emerging opportunities, examples of leadership, and innovative financing strategies that can support a summit-to-seabed approach to value-building food systems transformation. CAFSA and GFFN will also provide occasional insights into specific policies that can support countries’ efforts to meet the standards set out in the ICJ advisory opinion.