Climate, Trade, and Food Security: Reading Argentina’s ICJ Submission Between the Lines
View of the ICJ courtroom at the start of the hearing. Photograph: UN Photo/ICJ-CIJ/Frank van Beek
As the International Court of Justice (ICJ) considers its first-ever Advisory Opinion on States’ obligations regarding climate change, the diversity of voices reflected in the written submissions reveals the complex and often contested terrain of climate governance. Among these, Argentina’s intervention stands out—not for advancing a bold vision of climate justice, but for its careful navigation of the tensions between climate action, food security, and trade. Grounded in principles of equity and development, Argentina’s submission underscores concerns about how stringent climate policies might impact its role as a major food producer and exporter. This intervention highlights a broader challenge in international law: the need to reconcile overlapping and sometimes conflicting regimes on climate, trade, and human rights. Beyond its explicit arguments, Argentina’s submission raises critical questions about green protectionism, agricultural subsidies in the Global North, and the use of food security as a constraint on environmental ambition. This blog critically unpacks Argentina’s statement, situating it within broader debates on trade equity, legal coherence, and food justice in climate law.
Climate Obligations with Caveats
Argentina grounds its submission in key principles of international environmental law: common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR), equity, and the right to development (paras. 39, 17). These are long-standing pillars of Global South climate diplomacy, intended to ensure that States’ historical contributions to climate change and their present capacities are taken into account. But Argentina adds another layer to the argument: food security limits the scope of international climate obligations.
As one of the major world producers and exporters of food, Argentina signals unease with potentially stringent or homogenised climate mitigation policies, especially those targeting emissions from land use and agriculture, sectors central to its economic model. Paragraph 41 asserts that “any response to climate change… must recognise and take into account the fundamental priorities of safeguarding food security and ending hunger,” insisting that climate measures “ensure that food production is not threatened.” This argument is deepened in paragraph 42, where Argentina highlights food production’s role in eradicating hunger and poverty, as enshrined in SDGs 1 and 2. The submission also invokes sovereign rights over natural resources, citing States’ prerogative to design environmental and developmental policies under the UN Charter (para. 42), and it stresses the developmental imperatives of the Global South (para. 43).
This framing suggests a narrow interpretation of food security, emphasising production and export over accessibility, equity, or sustainability. Argentina implicitly posits a trade-off: stronger climate obligations could hinder its ability to serve as a reliable global food supplier. The underlying assumption is that food production and climate action are in tension, and that trade law offers a necessary backstop.
Between Climate Commitments and Trade Law: Legal Tensions in Agricultural Policy
Argentina’s submission reflects two interrelated trade concerns: First, it critiques agricultural subsidies entrenched in the Global North (para. 41). These subsidies distort global markets by artificially lowering prices and enhancing the competitiveness of industrialised farming systems in developed countries. Argentina points to the climate consequences of this model, not just in terms of trade distortion but in the externalisation of environmental costs. Heavily subsidised monocultures, high fossil fuel dependency, and excessive resource use in the Global North contribute significantly to emissions and biodiversity loss, all while undercutting more sustainable agricultural producers in the Global South (para. 41).
Second, Argentina warns against emerging forms of green protectionism –where environmental regulations (e.g., carbon-related trade measures) adopted by developed countries, might function as de facto trade barriers (para. 44). Such measures risk disproportionately affecting agricultural exports from the Global South, penalising countries like Argentina for production practices without accounting for historical emissions, structural inequalities, or development needs. In light of this, Argentina calls for the conclusion of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) negotiations to reform the multilateral trade agricultural rules, a mandate unfulfilled for over 25 years (para. 41).
This dual critique reveals Argentina’s core concern: that current trade rules and climate commitments remain structurally imbalanced. The submission implicitly calls for a level playing field in climate governance, one that scrutinises not only Global South emissions but also the unsustainable consumption and production patterns embedded in Northern agricultural support regimes. Yet, Argentina’s reliance on WTO norms reinforces a narrow, trade-centred vision of food security. Rather than challenging the structural inequities within the WTO itself—or proposing alternative models such as agroecological trade frameworks—Argentina stops short of articulating a transformative vision for aligning trade, climate, and food systems.
Food Security: The Tension Between Rights and Reality
Argentina’s submission invokes the right to food and the right to development to argue that climate mitigation should not undermine agricultural production. However, this engagement with human rights is selective and ultimately instrumental. The submission makes no reference to General Comment No. 12 of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which defines the right to food as more than availability—it must also be accessible, adequate, and sustainable. Argentina’s framing narrows food security to agricultural output and export capacity, neglecting its social and ecological dimensions.
This instrumental use of human rights becomes clear when contrasted with Argentina’s domestic realities. Despite being a major food exporter, the country faces worsening food insecurity, especially among urban poor and Indigenous communities. Structural inequality, inflation, and climate impacts have widened the gap between national productivity and equitable access to food. Meanwhile, domestic climate policy remains uneven. Deforestation continues in regions like the Gran Chaco, often linked to the expansion of soy and cattle production. Fossil fuel subsidies remain in place, and shale development in Vaca Muerta has accelerated.
Together, these contradictions expose a broader law–policy disconnect. Rather than using rights discourse to demand climate justice or to reimagine food systems as both resilient and equitable, Argentina employs it defensively to shield current agricultural models from environmental regulation. This approach risks reducing the transformative potential of rights frameworks to mere policy justifications. A more integrated vision would treat food systems as sites of both vulnerability and opportunity, central to climate justice, not collateral to it.
Integrated vs. Defensive: Global South Approaches to Food Security
Other Global South States adopt notably different approaches in their ICJ submissions. For instance, Vanuatu and other Small Island States emphasise the existential threat that climate change poses to food systems through sea-level rise, ocean acidification, and ecosystem collapse, framing climate inaction as a violation of the right to culture and an adequate standard of living (p. 27, 90). In addition, Peru raises concerns about the effects of climate change on peatland ecosystems, which span over 62,000 km2 of the Peruvian Amazon and are essential to the food security of rural Amazonian communities (para 33). Namibia, in turn, focuses on its acute vulnerability to climate change, rooted in its extremely arid environment. Its submission links this vulnerability to heightened food insecurity and the infringement of interconnected rights, including the rights to health, life, and an adequate standard of living. Namibia also highlights the broader economic stakes of climate impacts, underscoring that agriculture remains a cornerstone of its economy and a primary source of livelihoods. In doing so, it frames climate action not as a constraint, but as a necessary condition for safeguarding both socio-economic rights and long-term development (paras. 35, 108).
What these submissions have in common is an integrated normative approach: climate action is framed as a tool for realising broader social and economic rights, not a threat to them. In contrast, Argentina adopts a compartmentalised stance, invoking rights and trade commitments defensively rather than affirmatively.
A Missed Opportunity for Legal Integration?
Argentina’s submission reflects the difficult balancing act many middle-income countries face: defending national economic interests while participating in an evolving climate legal order. But by leaning heavily on trade law and narrowly construed food security concerns, Argentina risks reinforcing a fragmented legal landscape, where climate, trade, and human rights obligations remain siloed.
The Advisory Opinion offers an opportunity not just to clarify States’ climate duties, but to push for legal coherence: a framework in which food systems are seen as central to both mitigation and adaptation, and in which trade rules and climate law are brought into conversation, not conflict. In that sense, Argentina’s intervention is significant not only for what it says, but also for what it leaves unsaid. A more ambitious legal vision would recognise that the long-term viability of food security lies not in shielding current practices from climate regulation, but in transforming food systems to be equitable, resilient, and ecologically sound.
