Inside the System, Outside the Box: Palau’s Pursuit of Climate Justice and Security at the United Nations†

1. introduction

In the summer of 2012, a crew from the Public Broadcasting Station’s (PBS) Friday evening programme ‘Need to Know’ travelled to Palau to document the damage wrought by climate change. What they found – and what they broadcast – were images of submerged houses, an eroded shore, destroyed crops, and islands that have been slowly disappearing for the last 20 years.¹ The images were heart-wrenching, but the programme had little to no resonance. The American public had evidently seen sinking islands before. Like other recent stories about climate change, it seemed lost in the ether.

In October 2012, the American public was once again shown vivid images of a sinking island. This time, though, it was not tropical – it was Manhattan. Hurricane Sandy battered the East Coast of the United States (US). It caused extensive power outages, flooded streets, forced people from their homes, and resulted in more than 100 deaths. It caused more than US$60 billion in damage in the states of New York and New Jersey alone.² In Sandy’s wake, people asked themselves two questions: was it the result of climate change, and did it represent ‘the new normal’?

To paraphrase Bloomberg Businessweek, the answer to the first question is indeed ‘it’s climate change, stupid’.³ While no single storm can definitively be attributed to climate change, the force and frequency of aggregate storm surges are on the rise, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).⁴ As to the second question, Sandy’s effects have long been ‘the new normal’ for island states. Island leaders have been sounding the alarm on climate change for years as rising seas, disastrous weather, and ocean acidification ravage their countries. Unlike New Jersey, their communities are unlikely to be restored. In the face of a future where crisis is a permanent state, the leaders of these small islands have pursued legal paths that can help to facilitate international climate coordination.⁵

The United Nations (UN) is an important forum in which to develop effective climate coordination. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon warned world leaders at a general debate of the 2012 UN General Assembly (UNGA) that too many people in power are ‘willfully blind’ when it comes to climate...