Source: Radio New Zealand
By Jamie Tahana for RNZ Pacific
Vishal Prasad (Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change) speaks to the press before the International Court of Justice following the conclusion of an advisory opinion on countries’ obligations to protect the climate. AFP / Lina Selg
2025 was a big year for Vishal Prasad. From the giddy high of a win at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), to the euphoria of being awarded an ‘alternative nobel prize’ as part of a collective of Pacific activists, while also plumbing new depths of frustration and despair at international climate talks in Brazil.
The 28 year-old, who lives in Suva, has been beamed across the world this year as the president of Pacific Island Students Fighting Climate Change, the group of Pacific youth behind the herculean effort to take the world’s major emitters to the UN’s highest court in the Hague.
In an interview this week, Prasad said the mammoth year ended with a flurry of emotions: pride, gratitude, and elation on one hand, frustration and growing concern on the other.
“The year has been a huge year,” he said. “We’ve seen immense, huge developments in the climate space, the ICJ’s advisory opinion being one of the huge outcomes.
“[But] It is a very difficult time. I’d say we’re at this point coming into the end of the year because the necessary energy and the speed at which the world needs to move still is lacking in many spaces.”
That advisory opinion, handed down in July, was a significant advancement for small countries trying to force international action to address the climate crisis. In a rare unanimous opinion from the 12-judge bench, the ICJ found that states are required under international law to protect the climate and prevent further harms.
The judges also found that states must implement evidence-based measures to cut greenhouse gas emission to protect the climate.
The path to that ruling started in a Port Vila classroom in 2019, when a group of students questioned why international law was silent on what they saw as their greatest threat. That started a six-year movement that led to The Hague.
Members of the Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change. Supplied / Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change
Five months after that sunny afternoon at the Peace Palace in the Netherlands, Prasad said he’s still shocked by the strength of the advisory opinion that was handed down. He had been in contact with many of the communities who provided testimony for the case across the Pacific.
“There has been immense joy, I think, that this has been a win. I think the first thing that people take is that this is a win for the region and it is a source of hope to hang on to,” he said, conceding that many communities had not expected such a strong outcome.
“There’s just been disappointment in the climate space for the last how many years and people have stopped expecting good news,” he said. “This was one thing that caught some people by shock, but also some whose expectations were maybe here but the advisory opinion rose beyond their expectations.”
The effort saw PISFCC win the ‘Right Livelihood Award’, also known as the ‘Alternative Nobel Prize’ alongside their legal counsel, Chamorro lawyer and writer Julian Aguon, for what judges said was “turning survival into a matter of rights.”
“Central to their strategy was gathering testimonies from Pacific communities, who are among those contributing least [to] climate change yet facing some of its harshest consequences,” the organisation behind the award said in its press release.
How much people would pay heed to the ICJ’s opinion was put to the test only a couple of months later, when Prasad found himself in the Brazilian city of Belem, the gateway to the Amazon, which last month hosted the annual round of climate negotiations known as COP.
The talks are the key mechanism for getting countries to commit to reducing their greenhouse gas emissions, along with other measures to mitigate against the worst effects of climate change. Yet, for Pacific countries, they’re almost always a source of obstinance, frustration, and bewilderment.
This year’s bout of talks came against an even greater backdrop of pessimism. Enthusiasm for climate action has waned in many Western countries, including New Zealand, and the United States has exited the Paris agreement and rescinded climate finance commitments altogether, with President Trump calling the climate crisis a “con job.”
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres opened the summit with a grim prognosis that it was “inevitable” the target of limiting global warming to no more than 1.5 degrees celsius would be missed. The target, agreed to in the 2015 Paris agreement, had been advocated for by Pacific countries, who said anything beyond that would imperil their futures.
Vanuatu’s Climate Change Minister Ralph Regenvanu (3rd L) speaks to the media after an International Court of Justice (ICJ) session tasked with issuing the first Advisory Opinion (AO) on states’ legal obligations to address climate change, in The Hague on 23 July 2025. AFP / John Thys
“Every year we leave the COP depressed, but [we] will begrudgingly continue to participate because if we’re not at the table we’ll be on the menu,” the Vanuatu climate change minister, Ralph Regenvanu, told The Guardian in September. “But I don’t think it is reformable.”
They were frustrations shared by Prasad.
“We saw that at COP, there was a huge change in the narratives of countries that were supporting the advisory opinion, asking for the usage of the advisory opinion. And then also those that were blocking progress as well, being very conscious about the advisory opinion,” he said. “So I think the potential for the opinion to shape climate politics and policy is huge, and I think that needs to be unlocked further.
Vanuatu, which led the pursuit for the advisory opinion from a government level, is now working to secure a vote at the UN General Assembly to turn the advisory opinion into concrete obligations.
“I think a lot of people have lost faith. I think there is a lot of disappointment with existing processes and I think that’s exactly where the advisory opinion steps in,” he said. “I think in this very tense moment the advisory opinion does bring hope because now you have a baseline to actually measure and hold governments accountable.
“We’ve seen a lot of people reach out to us … talking about how they’re looking at mounting campaigns within their country to say, okay, whether it’s in Europe, whether it’s in Asia, or how a particular activity, particular initiative or policy of government is incompatible with the ICJ and how they’re thinking of using the AO to kind of mount a counter to this.”
President of the International Court of Justice Yuji Iwasawa (C) and other members of the top UN court as it handed down a landmark ruling on climate change. JOHN THYS / AFP
Prasad, at the end of this mammoth year, was spending some time relaxing in the west of Fiji before heading to spend Christmas with family in Suva. But also this week, a tropical depression brushed along the country’s north, another reminder of the stakes at play.
He hoped 2026 would be another mammoth year. There was work to do to support Vanuatu’s bid to get the advisory opinion through the UN General Assembly. Could the advisory opinion open new paths to litigation?
Just as fulfilling, he said, was work outside the nebulous and insular realms of international law and politics. What gave so much of the drive for the students’ campaign were stories of communities on the front lines across the Pacific, from yam farmers in Vanuatu to fishermen in Solomon Islands, to the women on Bougainville’s Carteret Islands. Prasad said he wanted to continue working with them.
“The advisory opinion was one great way of claiming space, claiming ownership and bringing Pacific people to a space that really was not theirs. And so there are many such injustices that still exist. There are many such spaces that still exist where we need to claim, reclaim the space, reclaim the power that we have.”
Still, while he called the international system “frustrating” and deeply flawed, there was no alternative but to remain optimistic.
“If you give into despair, if you give into disappointment then there is no way out. I think that’s the beauty of Pacific campaigns, because even in those dark, desperate, despair-filled days, you have people around you that are shouldering the burden with you. And that’s the nature of the Pacific. It’s a community. It’s a family. And I think that makes it much easier for us to carry on in that way versus say someone outside the region.”
– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand