Vanuatu leads a global climate case from dying reefs to flooded graves

Port Vila, Vanuatu (AP) – When John Warmington began a decade in front of his house in Vanuatus Havanah port with the reefs, the corals like a sunken forest – high stands of Staghorn, which were branched into yellow trade, such as a sum such as roofing and clouds of darting fish, which were shot through the surface fish.

“We used to know every inch of this reef,” he said. “It was like a friend.”

Now it is not to be recognized. After Cyclone Pam hit the reef in 2015, sediment suffocated from the rivers in land in the coral beds. Dortekrone headed and devoured the relaxing polyps. Back-to-back cyclone crushed in 2023, which was left. Then, in December 2024, an earthquake of the size of 7.3 shook the sea floor.

What remains is a coral cemetery – bleached debris that are scattered across the sea floor, the habitats collapsed, life disappeared. “We came out of the water under tears,” said Warmington, who registered thousands of dives on this only reef. “We only see heartache.”

This heartache is becoming more and more common in this Pacific island station, when the intensification of cyclones, rising seas and salt water intrusions change against coasts and threatens everyday life. Since 1993, sea levels around the coast of Vanuatu have increased by about 6 millimeters (0.24 inches) per year – significantly faster than the global average – and in some areas the tectonic activity has doubled this rate.

International Court

On Wednesday, Vanuatu will get his day in the highest place in the world. The International Court of Justice will make an advisory statement about what legal obligations the nations have to combat climate change and what consequences they may be confronted if they do not. The case listed by Vanuatu is supported by more than 130 countries, is seen as a potential turning point in the international climate law.

“If large, environmentally harmful countries are simply passed on as usual and the climate crisis does not take seriously, it can be really sad and disappointing,” said the 16-year-old climate and vepaiamele drip. “If you rule in our favor, it could change it all.”

The opinion will not be legally binding, but could help shape future efforts to blame great emitter and to secure financing and action that need small islands to adapt or survive.

After decades of frustration for Pacific nations who have seen, they have seen how their home countries disappear. In Tuvalu, where the average height is only 2 meters (6.6 feet), more than a third of the population has applied for a climate migration visa to Australia. A large part of the country will be under water until 2100. In Nauru, the government has started selling passports to wealthy foreigners that offer visa -free access to dozens of countries in order to achieve revenues for possible moving efforts.

“The agreements made between the states at the international level do not move quickly enough,” said Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu Minister of Climate Change. “You will definitely not be fulfilled according to what science tells us.”

Vanuatu has already caught up with opinions from other international courts and urges the recognition of ecozid – the destruction of the environment – as a crime according to the International Criminal Court. “We have to continue fighting until the last piece,” said Regenvanu.

How the climate change is decimated

Climate change is not a theory for children in Vanuatu – it is a classroom or the lack of one.

In Sainte Jeanne d’Arc School on Efate Island, primary school teacher Noellina Tavi has spent two of the last three years to teach her students in tents – first after the cyclones in 2023 and again the earthquake of 2025.

With a shortage of incessantly, her class was combined with another. The students fidget and lose their focus. “It’s too overcrowded,” said Tavi. “We can’t work peacefully.”

When it rains, the tents become cold and muddy. Tavi often sends the students home so that they don’t get sick. Every time a storm approaches, the tents have to be broken down, the furniture is protected and the children sent home. “That bothers her training for a whole week,” she said.

In rural areas, the extreme weather hits something even easier: nutritional security. On Nguna Island, Bauer Kalang Laban Cyclones extinguished the banana, maniok and Taro plants out of the way to his community.

“We would have nothing after a cyclone for months,” he said. With the support of Save the Children, Laban and other farmers are now stored by preserved fruit and vegetables in a facility next to their gardens. “But not every community has it,” he said.

More than 70% of Vanuatu’s population lives in rural areas and are dependent on the small agriculture.

In 2025, USAID gave funding for a rainwater harvest initiative to improve water access in the cyclone evacuation centers in one of the most remote, droughty provinces of the country, said Vomboe Shem, Climate Lead for Save the Children Vanuatu. The materials have already been shipped and distributed, but the project was discontinued.

“These disasters always take place,” said Shem. “It pushes our communities to their limits.”

Not all of these effects can only be adhered to on climate change, said Christina Shaw, CEO of the Vanuatu Environmental Science Society. Coastal development, the tectonic demise, the volcanic eruptions, the deforestation and the pollution also contribute to the decline in the ecosystem.

“Vanuatus surroundings are quite fragile due to its inherent nature, since it is young with narrow reefs, has small quantities on the top and is regularly insulted by natural disasters,” she said. “But we also have to think about the other human effects on our environment.”

The damage is not limited to houses, gardens and reefs – it reaches places that are once considered inviolable.

On the island of Pele, the village boss Amos Kalsont is sitting at the grave of his brother, when waves round against broken tombstones in sand. At High Tide, both his brother’s graves and his father are only a few arm lengths from the sea. Some houses and gardens have already been moved in the country, and the penetration of salt water has earned the primary drinking water source of the community. Now the municipality is considering laying the entire village – but that would mean that the country would be clarified by hand.

“The sea catches up and we don’t know what else to do,” said Kalsont. “It is not fair that we have to face the consequences if we have not contributed to it at all.”

Many in Vanuatu are still obliged to build something stronger and hope that the rest of the world will support them.

“This is our future and in particular the future of our children, the future of our grandchildren,” said Regenvanu. “We just have to push for the best of what we can do.”

Back in Havanah Harbor, John Warmington still dives the reef, which he sees as part of his family. While a large part of it is gone, he and his wife Sandy have started planting coral fragments to restore what is left.

“Our friend is still here,” he said. “Life comes back.”

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Follow Annika Hammerschlag on Instagram @Ahammergram.

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