New Delhi: India abstained on Wednesday (May 21) when the United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly voted to endorse the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion on states’ obligations on climate change. The country argued that the resolution omitted any reference to climate finance and risked imposing obligations on developing countries outside the agreed multilateral framework.The resolution tabled by the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu and sponsored by a large list of states, was adopted by a vote of 141 in favour to 8 against, with 28 abstentions. The United States, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Belarus, Liberia and Yemen voted against. India abstained, along with Turkey, the host of the COP31 climate summit, as well as oil producers Qatar and Nigeria.In its explanation of vote on Wednesday, delivered by First Secretary Petal Gahlot, India said there was “absolutely no reference to the necessity of developed countries continuing to take the lead in mitigation and providing adequate and predictable financing, technology transfer and capacity building to developing countries”.Stating that the term climate finance appears nowhere in the text, Gahlot noted that the climate finance goal agreed to in 2024 “falls short of the needs of developing countries and deserved more attention in a resolution that deals with Obligations of States in Respect of Climate Change, particularly since the Court’s Advisory Opinion itself does not shy away from doing so”. India called this “a serious omission”.New Delhi argued that the resolution risked elevating a non-binding advisory opinion to binding or quasi-binding status. “We are therefore seriously concerned that the resolution undermines the sacrosanct architecture of the UNFCCC [United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change] process, by elevating an Advisory Opinion to a binding or quasi-binding status, attempting to impose obligations on developing countries that have not been multilaterally agreed upon,” Gahlot said, adding, “This is a dangerous precedent that we must all be wary of.”India further argued that the resolution prescribes specific mitigation pathways, imposes external benchmarks for ambition and creates conditions that “may invite judicial or quasi-judicial scrutiny of nationally determined contributions”. This, Gahlot said, “seriously undermines national policy space and disrupts the bottom-up architecture of the Paris Agreement”.On the Global Stocktake references in the text, India said the resolution calls for implementing specific elements, including paragraph 28, which “was not consistent with the agreed mandate of the Global Stocktake”. Gahlot said Article 14 of the Paris Agreement envisions the Stocktake as a mechanism to inform Parties “in a nationally determined manner” and not as a vehicle for “prescriptive or implementation-oriented obligations”. She added that the resolution failed to reflect the full scope of the Stocktake outcomes, including findings on adaptation gaps and means of implementation.India supported amendments to operative paragraphs 3, 4 and 11 of the text, and abstained on the amendment to operative paragraph 2, saying it could “only take note of the Advisory Opinion of the Court”. All four sets of amendments, proposed by Saudi Arabia among others, were rejected by the Assembly before the final vote.Gahlot said India has “deep sympathies” with Pacific island states and the wider community of Small Island Developing States. “It is for this reason, that despite our concerns not being addressed in this resolution, India did not vote against it,” she said, adding the hope that “our brothers and sisters from the Pacific region will understand our predicament”.India also stressed that the General Assembly’s adoption of the resolution “does not, in itself, create binding commitments for us” and that India’s obligations “arise only from outcomes adopted under the UNFCCC process”.India’s position on Wednesday echoed the arguments it made before the ICJ itself. In its written submissions and oral arguments, India had contended that States have an inalienable right to utilise natural resources, including fossil fuels, for economic and social development.In response to a question from Judge Cleveland during the December 2024 hearings about State obligations regarding fossil fuel production and subsidies, India argued that this right is well established under international law while acknowledging the corresponding responsibility to prevent environmental damage.The resolution welcomed the ICJ’s unanimous advisory opinion of July 23, 2025 and affirmed its importance as “an authoritative contribution to the clarification of existing international law”.It called upon all States to “comply with their respective obligations under international law to ensure the protection of the climate system and other parts of the environment from anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, as identified by the court”. The text also requested the UN Secretary-General to submit a report to the Assembly during its eighty-second session on ways to advance compliance with the court’s findings.The advisory opinion, the first time the ICJ examined the international legal framework applicable to climate change, found that States have legal obligations to protect the climate system from anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. The court also ruled that States breaching these obligations are legally responsible and may be required to stop the wrongful conduct, offer guarantees of non-repetition and make full reparation depending on the circumstances.The resolution originally included stronger language from the advisory opinion on establishing an “International Register of Damage” to record evidence and claims, but this was removed after nearly a dozen rounds of consultations in order to secure broader support, as per Associated Press.The text that went to a vote included provisions on adopting national climate action plans to limit global temperature rise to below 1.5 degrees Celsius and phasing out subsidies for fossil fuel exploration, production and exploitation.The Trump administration had earlier urged nations to pressurise Vanuatu to withdraw the draft. The State Department issued guidance to all US embassies and consulates stating that it “strongly objects” to the proposal and that its adoption “could pose a major threat to US industry”.Odo Tevi, the Vanuatu ambassador to the UN, told the Assembly before the vote that the advisory opinion “does not invent new law” but “clarifies the law that already binds us”. He noted that “the States and peoples bearing the heaviest burden are, very often, those who contributed least to the problem”.Voting against the resolution, United States deputy ambassador to the UN, Tammy Bruce, said the resolution “improperly treats the court’s opinion as irrefutably authoritative and as setting out binding obligations on States”. She said the text “includes inappropriate political demands relating to fossil fuels”.UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the vote “a powerful affirmation of international law, climate justice, science and the responsibility of states to protect people from the escalating climate crisis”.