Courts, conferences, IGOs, NGOs and the media in global environmental protection: HSC Legal Studies

What this dot point is asking

This page covers the rest of the responses to global environmental protection: the roles of courts and conferences, intergovernmental organisations (IGOs), non-government organisations (NGOs) and the media. It also covers the syllabus outcome to evaluate the effectiveness of legal and non-legal measures in protecting the global environment, which is the judgement most Section III questions on this option ask for. The first responses (the nation state and state sovereignty, the United Nations and international instruments) are on the sovereignty and United Nations page.

Keep the distinction clear. Legal measures are binding rules and the institutions that apply them: treaties, legislation, courts and tribunals. Non-legal measures do not bind anyone but can change behaviour and values: conferences and their political declarations, IGO science and advice, NGO campaigns and media coverage. NESA's 2023 feedback rewarded responses that separated promoting protection from achieving it.

The answer

Courts

Courts apply and develop environmental law. At the international level they resolve disputes between states and give advisory opinions; at the regional and domestic level they apply human rights and environmental law to governments and companies.

The International Court of Justice. The ICJ is the UN's principal judicial organ. It hears contentious cases only between states that have accepted its jurisdiction, and gives advisory opinions at the request of UN organs.

• Gabčíkovo-Nagymaros Project (Hungary/Slovakia) (1997). The Court recognised the need to reconcile economic development with environmental protection, expressed in the concept of sustainable development, but held both states had breached their obligations and should negotiate.

• Pulp Mills on the River Uruguay (Argentina v Uruguay) (2010). Environmental impact assessment is a requirement of general international law where an activity may cause significant transboundary harm. Uruguay breached its procedural duty to notify and consult, but not its substantive obligations, so the pulp mill kept operating.

• Whaling in the Antarctic (Australia v Japan: New Zealand intervening) (31 March 2014). The Court held (12 votes to 4) that Japan's JARPA II special permits were not "for purposes of scientific research" under the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling, and ordered Japan to revoke them. Japan complied by ending JARPA II but began a new program (NEWREP-A) in 2015, and in 2019 left the International Whaling Commission to resume commercial whaling in its own waters. It is a classic example of a court decision that was obeyed in form but not in substance.

• Certain Activities (Costa Rica v Nicaragua), compensation (2 February 2018). The ICJ's first award of compensation for environmental damage itself, including loss of environmental goods and services.

• Obligations of States in respect of Climate Change (Advisory Opinion, 23 July 2025). Requested by the General Assembly in resolution 77/276 (2023) after a campaign led by Vanuatu and Pacific students, with record participation by states. The Court unanimously advised that:

  • the UNFCCC, Kyoto Protocol and Paris Agreement impose binding obligations, and 1.5°C is the primary temperature goal under Paris;
  • states' discretion in setting NDCs is limited: they must reflect each state's highest possible ambition and, taken together, be capable of achieving the 1.5°C goal;
  • customary international law independently requires states to act with stringent due diligence to prevent significant harm to the climate system and to cooperate, so obligations apply even to states outside the climate treaties;
  • a state's failure to take appropriate action, "including through fossil fuel production, fossil fuel consumption, the granting of fossil fuel exploration licences or the provision of fossil fuel subsidies", may constitute an internationally wrongful act, entailing cessation, guarantees of non-repetition and full reparation where causation can be shown;
  • a clean, healthy and sustainable environment is essential to the enjoyment of other human rights.

  The opinion is not binding, but it is the highest authority on what international law requires, and it is already cited in domestic litigation and negotiations.

Other international and regional bodies.

• ITLOS advisory opinion (21 May 2024). At the request of the Commission of Small Island States on Climate Change and International Law, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea advised that greenhouse gas emissions are pollution of the marine environment under UNCLOS.
• Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz v Switzerland (ECtHR Grand Chamber, 9 April 2024). A group of older Swiss women established that Switzerland's inadequate climate policy violated article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (private and family life). Switzerland's parliament responded that it had already done enough, showing the limits of enforcement.
• Inter-American Court of Human Rights advisory opinion OC-32/25 (2025). Recognised states' human rights obligations in the climate emergency, including a right to a healthy climate.
• Daniel Billy v Australia (UN Human Rights Committee, 2022). Torres Strait Islanders established that Australia's failure to adapt to climate change violated their rights to private and family life and to culture under the ICCPR. The Committee is not a court and its views are not binding.

Domestic courts. National courts are where environmental law is most directly enforced. Urgenda Foundation v Netherlands (Dutch Supreme Court, 20 December 2019) upheld an order to cut emissions by at least 25 per cent below 1990 levels by the end of 2020, based on human rights duties. In Australia, the NSW Land and Environment Court refused the Rocky Hill coal mine partly on climate grounds (Gloucester Resources v Minister for Planning, 2019) and ordered the NSW EPA to develop climate policies (Bushfire Survivors for Climate Action v EPA, 2021), while the Federal Court rejected a common law duty of care in Sharma (2022) and Pabai Pabai v Commonwealth (15 July 2025), whose appeal to the Full Federal Court was undecided as at September 2026 (see Australia's federal structure).

Conferences

International conferences bring states together to agree principles, negotiate treaties and review progress. Two kinds matter: the one-off world conferences that shaped the field, and the annual Conferences of the Parties (COPs) that run the climate and biodiversity treaties.

Assessment. Conferences are effective at agenda-setting and law-making: every major treaty came from one. They are limited by consensus, which gives every state a veto and produces compromise language, and by the gap between declarations and action.

Intergovernmental organisations

IGOs are organisations whose members are states, created by treaty. Some are part of the UN family; others are regional or specialised.

• The IPCC (WMO and UNEP, 1988) assesses climate science. Its reports are approved line by line by governments, which gives them authority; its Sixth Assessment Report (2021 to 2023) found it "unequivocal" that human influence has warmed the planet.
• The International Whaling Commission (under the 1946 whaling convention) has maintained a moratorium on commercial whaling since the 1985-86 season, but members can leave, as Japan did in 2019.
• The International Maritime Organization regulates shipping pollution under MARPOL. In October 2025 its members voted to adjourn adoption of a global net-zero framework for shipping for a year.
• The International Seabed Authority regulates mining of the deep seabed beyond national jurisdiction. It has not finalised a mining code, and dozens of states support a precautionary pause.
• Funding bodies. The Global Environment Facility (1991) and the Green Climate Fund (2010) finance projects in developing countries.
• Regional bodies. The Pacific Islands Forum declared climate change "the single greatest threat" to the region in the Boe Declaration (2018) and in 2021 declared that members' maritime zones will not shrink as sea levels rise.
• The IUCN (1948) combines state and NGO members and publishes the Red List of Threatened Species.

IGOs are effective at producing science, standards and finance, but they are only as strong as their members allow, and powerful members can block or leave.

Non-government organisations

NGOs are independent, non-profit organisations. Their roles are advocacy and lobbying, research and monitoring, litigation, education and direct action, and many hold observer status at COPs.

• International. Greenpeace (1971) is known for direct action; French agents bombed its ship Rainbow Warrior in Auckland in 1985. WWF (1961) funds conservation and lobbies governments. The Climate Action Tracker (run by research NGOs) rates countries' targets, exposing gaps between promises and policy.
• Litigation. ClientEarth in Europe and the Environmental Defenders Office in Australia bring public interest cases; the EDO represented the applicants in Bushfire Survivors for Climate Action v EPA (2021). Community groups also litigate through NGO lawyers, as in the Living Wonders cases (2022 to 2024) against coal mine approvals.
• Youth and Pacific NGOs. Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change, formed in 2019 by law students at the University of the South Pacific in Vanuatu, began the campaign that became the ICJ advisory opinion. School Strike 4 Climate mobilised students worldwide from 2018.
• Australia. The Australian Conservation Foundation (1966), the Climate Council (2013) and Lock the Gate campaign on reef protection, climate policy and coal and gas approvals.

Limits. NGOs cannot make or enforce law, depend on donations, and can be restricted by governments. NSW's 2022 anti-protest laws, aimed partly at climate protesters, were partly declared invalid by the NSW Supreme Court in Kvelde v State of New South Wales [2023] NSWSC 1560 because they burdened the implied freedom of political communication.

The media

The media shapes community values, which drive law reform. Documentaries such as An Inconvenient Truth (2006) and Blue Planet II (2017), whose images of plastic in the ocean contributed to action on single-use plastics, reached mass audiences. Coverage of mass coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef in 2024 and 2025 and of the Black Summer bushfires (2019 to 2020) brought climate harm home to Australians. Social media gave young activists such as Greta Thunberg global reach, and investigative journalism exposes greenwashing and non-compliance.

Limits. The media can polarise debate, give false balance to fringe views, spread misinformation, and move on quickly once an issue leaves the news. Ownership and commercial pressures affect coverage.

Evaluating legal and non-legal measures

Judgement. Legal measures are effective to a moderate extent: they now clearly define what states must do, and courts at every level are more willing to hold governments to account, but enforcement depends on sovereign compliance. Non-legal measures are highly effective at promoting protection and at driving legal change, as the path from a student campaign in Vanuatu to a unanimous ICJ opinion shows, but they cannot achieve protection alone. The most effective responses combine both: science from IGOs, pressure from NGOs and media, agreement at conferences, and enforcement through treaties and courts.

In one sentence

Courts, conferences, IGOs, NGOs and the media together have turned environmental protection into clear international and domestic obligations, from Pulp Mills and Whaling to the unanimous 2025 ICJ climate opinion, but because courts depend on consent, conferences on consensus and non-legal actors on persuasion, they are far better at promoting protection than achieving it.

Try this

Q1. Outline the role of conferences in global environmental protection. (4 marks)

• What the marker wants. Agenda-setting and treaty-making (Stockholm, Rio, Paris) with an example of a limitation (consensus, COP30).

Q2. Explain the significance of the ICJ's 2025 advisory opinion on climate change. (6 marks)

• What the marker wants. How it was requested, three key findings, its non-binding status, and its likely influence.

Q3. Assess the role of NGOs and the media in protecting the global environment. (8 marks)

• What the marker wants. Specific NGOs and media examples, what they achieved (value change, litigation, the ICJ case), their limits, and a judgement.