The tiny Pacific nation of Vanuatu turns to the world court as climate disasters mount

PORT VILA, Vanuatu (AP) — When John Warmington first began diving the reefs outside his home in Vanuatu’s Havannah Harbor a decade ago, the coral rose like a sunken forest — tall stands of staghorns branched into yellow antlers, plate corals layered like canopies, and clouds of darting fish wove through the labyrinth.

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

Now, it’s unrecognizable. After Cyclone Pam battered the reef in 2015, sediment from inland rivers smothered the coral beds. Crown-of-thorns starfish swept in and devoured the recovering polyps. Back-to-back cyclones in 2023 crushed what was left. Then, in December 2024, a 7.3 magnitude earthquake shook the seabed.

What remains is a coral graveyard — bleached rubble scattered across the seafloor, habitats collapsed, life vanished. “We’ve come out of the water in tears,” said Warmington, who has logged thousands of dives on this single reef. “We just see heartbreak.”

That heartbreak is becoming more common across this Pacific island nation, where intensifying cyclones, rising seas and saltwater intrusion are reshaping coastlines and threatening daily life. Since 1993, sea levels around Vanuatu’s shores have risen by about 6 millimeters (.24 inches) per year — significantly faster than the global average — and in some areas, tectonic activity has doubled that rate.

On Wednesday, Vanuatu will get its day in the world’s highest court. The International Court of Justice will issue an advisory opinion on what legal obligations nations have to address climate change and what consequences they may face if they don’t. The case, led by Vanuatu and backed by more than 130 countries, is seen as a potential turning point in international climate law.

“Seeing large, polluting countries just continue business as usual and not take the climate crisis seriously can get really sad and disappointing,” said 16-year-old climate activist Vepaiamele Trief. “If they rule in our favor, that could change everything.”

The opinion won't be legally binding, but could help shape future efforts to hold major emitters accountable and secure the funding and action small island nations need to adapt or survive.

It comes after decades of frustration for Pacific nations who’ve watched their homelands disappear. In Tuvalu, where the average elevation is just 2 meters (6.6 feet), more than a third of the population has applied for a climate migration visa to Australia. By 2100, much of the country is projected to be under water at high tide. In Nauru, the government has begun selling passports to wealthy foreigners — offering visa-free access to dozens of countries — in a bid to generate revenue for possible relocation efforts.

“The agreements being made at an international level between states are not moving fast enough,” said Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu’s minister for climate change. “They're definitely not being met according to what the science tells us needs to happen.”

Vanuatu has already sought opinions from other international courts and is pushing for the recognition of ecocide — the destruction of the environment — as a crime under the International Criminal Court. “We have to keep fighting till the last bit,” Regenvanu said.

For children in Vanuatu, climate change isn’t a theory — it’s a classroom, or the lack of one.

At Sainte Jeanne D’Arc school on Efate Island, elementary school teacher Noellina Tavi has spent two of the last three years teaching her students in tents — first after the 2023 cyclones and again following the 2024 earthquake.

With a shortage of emergency tents, her class was combined with another. Students fidget and lose focus. “It’s too crowded,” Tavi said. “We can’t work peacefully.”

When it rains, the tents turn cold and muddy. Tavi often sends students home so they don’t get sick. Anytime a storm approaches, the tents must be dismantled, the furniture carried to shelter and the children sent home. “That disrupts their education for a whole week,” she said.

In rural areas, extreme weather hits something even more basic: food security. On Nguna Island, farmer Kaltang Laban has watched cyclones wipe out the banana, cassava and taro crops that feed his community.

“After a cyclone, we would have nothing for months,” he said. Now, with support from Save the Children, Laban and other farmers are storing preserved fruits and vegetables in a facility beside their gardens. “But not every community has this,” he said.

More than 70% of Vanuatu’s population lives in rural areas and depends on small-scale farming.

In 2025, USAID cut funding for a rainwater harvesting initiative designed to improve water access at cyclone evacuation centers in one of the country’s most remote, drought-prone provinces, said Vomboe Shem, climate lead for Save the Children Vanuatu. The materials had already been shipped and distributed, but the project was halted.

“These disasters are happening over and over again,” Shem said. “It’s pushing our communities to their limits.”

Not all of these impacts can be pinned solely on climate change, said Christina Shaw, CEO of the Vanuatu Environmental Science Society. Coastal development, tectonic sinking, volcanic eruptions, deforestation and pollution are also contributing to ecosystem decline.

“Vanuatu’s environment is quite fragile by its inherent nature in that it’s young with narrow reefs, has small amounts of topsoil and is insulted regularly by natural disasters,” she said. “But we do have to think about the other human impacts on our environment as well.”

The damage isn’t limited to homes, gardens and reefs — it’s reaching into places once thought to be untouchable.

On the island of Pele, village chief Amos Kalsont sits at his brother’s grave as waves lap against broken headstones half-buried in sand. At high tide, both his brother's and father’s graves sit just a few arm's lengths from the sea. Some homes and gardens have already been moved inland, and saltwater intrusion has tainted the community’s primary drinking water source. Now, the community is considering relocating the entire village — but that would mean leaving the land their grandparents cleared by hand.

“The sea is catching up and we don’t know what else to do,” Kalsont said. “It’s not fair that we have to face the consequences when we didn’t contribute to this in the first place.”

Many in Vanuatu remain committed to building something stronger and hope the rest of the world will support them.

“This is our future, and it’s particularly our children’s future, our grandchildren’s future,” said Regenvanu. “We just have to keep pushing for the best one we can.”

Back in Havannah Harbor, John Warmington still dives the reef he considers part of his family. While much of it is gone, he and his wife Sandy have begun replanting coral fragments in hopes of restoring what’s left.

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

Follow Annika Hammerschlag on Instagram @ahammergram.

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A sea turtle nibbles on what remains of the once vibrant reef at Havannah Harbour, off the coast of Efate Island, Vanuatu, on Sunday, July 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)

Children play on an uprooted tree along a beach in Mele, Vanuatu, that was once lined with vegetation, now largely lost to storms, erosion and other environmental pressures on Saturday, July 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)

Children play on an uprooted tree along a beach in Mele, Vanuatu that was once lined with vegetation, now largely lost to storms, erosion and other environmental pressures on Saturday, July 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)

A gravestone lies just feet from the shoreline on Pele Island, Vanuatu, Friday, July 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)

Village chief Amos Kalsont sits at his brother's grave on Pele Island, Vanuatu, just feet from the shoreline, where another headstone has been washed up on top of the site Friday, July 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)

Kaltang Laban organizes preserved food as part of a Save the Children project on Pele Island, Vanuatu, Thursday, July 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)

Kaltang Laban farms on Pele Island, Vanuatu, Thursday, July 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)

Students play outside tented classrooms at Sainte Jeanne D'Arc school in Port Vila, Vanuatu, Thursday, July 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)

Students play outside tented classrooms at Sainte Jeanne D'Arc school in Port Vila, Vanuatu, Thursday, July 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)

Students work in a tented classroom at Sainte Jeanne D'Arc school in Port Vila, Vanuatu, Thursday, July 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)

Noellina Tavi teaches elementary students in a tented classroom at Sainte Jeanne D'Arc school in Port Vila, Vanuatu, Thursday, July 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)

Children play on Pele Island, Vanuatu, Thursday, July 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)

Landslides triggered by cyclones, heavy rainfall and earthquakes scar the landscape in Efate Island, Vanuatu, Thursday, July 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)

A coral graveyard is all that remains of the once vibrant reef at Havannah Harbour, off the coast of Efate Island, Vanuatu, after repeated natural disasters, Sunday, July 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)

What remains of the "Tree of Life" on Sunday, July 20, 2025, is visible off the coast of Efate Island, Vanuatu, after being toppled by cyclones in 2023 and further damaged by an earthquake in 2024. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)

John Warmington points to a photo he took in 2017 of a coral formation at Havannah Harbour, off the coast of Efate Island, Vanuatu, that he once called the "Tree of Life," on Sunday, July 20, 2025. It was toppled by cyclones in 2023 and further damaged by an earthquake in 2024. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)

John Warmington, who has has dived the same patch of reef in Havannah Harbour, off the coast of Efate Island, Vanuatu, more than a thousand times, poses for a photo Sunday, July 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)

The once iconic Holiday Inn villas in Port Vila, Vanuatu, Saturday, July 19, 2025, sit partially sunken after being hit by multiple cyclones and an earthquake that caused irreparable damage. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)

BEIRUT (AP) — When the Israel- Hezbollah war broke out in early March, Hussein Shuman fled the heavy bombardment of the southern suburbs of Beirut, but he didn’t bother trying to rent an apartment elsewhere.

In areas deemed “safe” because the Lebanese militant group has no presence, he feels that Shiite Muslims like him are not welcome. Residents regard them with suspicion as potential Hezbollah members, and landlords charge exorbitant prices to rent to displaced families.

Instead, the 35-year-old, who works at a perfume company, headed to central Beirut where he set up a small tent where he has been staying, along with his wife, 7-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter.

Shuman even rejected an offer from a friend who invited him to bring his family to the Christian mountain town of Zgharta. He preferred to remain in his tent, even though it has flooded twice in the past two weeks.

“By staying here I have my dignity and respect,” Shuman said, sitting on a chair near his tent as a barber gave him an open-air hair cut. “We will not stay in a place where we are going to be humiliated.”

In a country full of suspicion, the more than 1 million people — most of them Shiite — displaced as a result of Israel’s evacuation orders and airstrikes have limited options.

Some landlords in Christian areas refuse to rent to Shiites. Others demand inflated rents and deposits that few can afford. Fatima Zahra, 42, from Beirut’s southern suburbs, said she and her sister sold their finest jewelry to pay the $5,000 the landlord charged up front for two months’ rent.

In some Beirut neighborhoods, displaced people who can afford to pay high rents are only allowed to take the apartment after landlords inform the security agencies to check on whether the family has any links to Hezbollah.

Sectarian tensions are a sensitive issue in Lebanon because the country fought a 15-year civil war ending in 1990 that largely broke down along sectarian lines.

Social frictions have worsened since Israel’s targeted airstrikes killed Hezbollah officials or members of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard in predominantly Christian, Sunni and Druze areas, raising fears among the hosts that Hezbollah members are mingling within the civilian population.

The Lebanese are deeply divided over Hezbollah’s wars with Israel, with many in the small nation blaming the Iran-backed group for dragging the country into a deadly conflict that has so far left more than 1,300 people dead and over 4,000 wounded. Hezbollah fired missiles into Israel two days after the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28, triggering the ongoing Middle East war.

The renewed war has caused widespread destruction and paralyzed the economy at a time when Lebanon is still in the throes of a historic economic crisis that broke out in late 2019. The country has not yet recovered from the last Israel-Hezbollah war in 2024.

In mid-March, an Israeli airstrike on an apartment in the town of Aramoun killed three people, prompting some local residents to call for the displaced to leave the area.

Days later, an airstrike on the nearby town of Bchamoun also killed three people, including a four-year-old girl, who were displaced from Beirut’s southern suburbs, where Hezbollah has a strong presence.

In neither case did Israel announce the intended target of the strikes, but neighbors assumed that someone in the targeted apartments was a Hezbollah member.

“Had we known that they were linked to Hezbollah, we would have kicked them out,” an angry man who owns an apartment in the building in Bchamoun said at the scene.

In late March, a missile exploded over the predominantly Christian Keserwan region north of Beirut, with debris falling on different areas. Although the Lebanese army later said that it was an Iranian missile passing over Lebanon that fell, many initially assumed that it was an Israeli airstrike targeting displaced people.

No one was was hurt by the missile debris, but a group of young men attacked displaced Shiites in the district of Haret Sakher near the coastal city of Jounieh, calling for their eviction, before local officials intervened.

“We don’t want them here,” shouted a Haret Sakher resident shortly after the strike. He said that some of the displaced refer to their hosts as “Zionists,” accusing them of being aligned with Israel because they criticize Hezbollah for dragging the country into the conflict. He added: “We don’t want national coexistence.”

George Saadeh, a member of Jounieh’s municipal council, told The Associated Press that he had called on Haret Sakher residents to avoid any reaction “so that we can preserve civil peace.”

In a predominantly Christian area just north of Beirut, plans to house displaced people in an abandoned warehouse near the port were suspended last week after drawing backlash from lawmakers and residents.

“The Israeli targeting campaign has created a lot of paranoia,” said Maha Yahya, director of the Beirut-based Carnegie Middle East Center. “If you see a displaced person, maybe you wonder, ‘What if this person is a target?’”

Fearing the tension could slip out of control, the army has beefed up its presence on the streets.

Last week, army commander Gen. Rudolphe Haikal toured Beirut and the southern city of Sidon and told troops that they should be “firm in the face of any attempt to undermine internal stability,” the army said in a statement.

Police forces, including a SWAT unit, were deployed at major intersections in the capital to preserve peace and prevent any friction between the displaced and locals. Police patrols pass through the tent city by Beirut’s coast where Shuman and his family are staying.

An official at the municipality of the predominantly Sunni town of Naameh, just south of Beirut, said that they have received thousands of people displaced from southern Lebanon.

The official said that in order to avoid tensions, they opened a school in one district for displaced Shiites and another in a different neighborhood for people displaced from Sunni border villages.

“There are concerns among people,” that conflict could break out said the official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

With the Israeli airstrikes and ground invasion mainly targeting Shiite areas, U.S. ambassador to Lebanon Michel Issa, a Lebanese-American, was criticized for stoking sectarianism. He told reporters in late March that the U.S. had asked Israel for a commitment that Christian villages in southern Lebanon will not be attacked.

“We have asked the Israelis to leave Christian villages in the south alone and they told us that they will not touch Christian villages,” Issa said. However, he added, “They (Israelis) said that they cannot guarantee” that the villages would be left alone “if there is infiltration into these villages” by Hezbollah members.

Several Christian villages in southern Lebanon have asked displaced Shiites who were sheltering there to leave, fearing that their presence might trigger Israeli attacks.

Legislator Taymour Joumblatt who is the leader of the Progressive Socialist Party, the largest Druze-led political group in the country, said that the biggest concern in the country now is “strife.”

“The most important thing is to reduce sectarian pressures on the ground,” Joumblatt said. “Our Shiites brothers are part of this country and our humanitarian duty is to help them.”

———

Associated Press writer Isabel DeBre contributed to this report from Beirut.

A woman passes an army soldier at the site where an intercepted missile fell in Sahel Alma, north of Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, March 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

FILE — A displaced woman who fled Israeli airstrikes in southern Lebanon, carries her belonging as she moves to a better spot to shelter from the rain, past an Arabic anti-war poster that reads, "Sacrificing for whom? Lebanon does not need war," in Beirut, Saturday, March 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla, File)

Special forces police officers deployed amid tensions between people displaced by Israeli strikes and local residents in Beirut neighborhoods, Lebanon, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

FILE — A child walks past tents sheltering people displaced by Israeli airstrikes in southern Lebanon and Dahiyeh, Beirut's southern suburbs, along the Beirut waterfront in Beirut, Lebanon, Saturday, March 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar, File)

Special forces police officers deployed amid tensions between people displaced by Israeli strikes and local residents in Beirut neighborhoods, Lebanon, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

File — Smoke rises from Israeli airstrikes in Dahiyeh, a southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, March 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla, File)