Fijian student Vishal Prasad stood in disbelief outside the world's highest court moments after it handed down a historic climate change ruling.
A scrum of international media gathered before him, awaiting his reaction to the long-awaited International Court of Justice case he helped start in a Pacific Island classroom years before.
"We're still trying to digest it," he said at the time of the July ruling.
"We all might be in a state of shock at the moment, with what the court has given us."
Six years after the to ask the World Court to rule on the responsibilities of states regarding climate change, the ICJ came back with a clear response.
Its 15 judges found that countries had a legal obligation to protect the climate from greenhouse gas emissions, and that failing to act could make polluting nations liable for reparations to nations harmed by climate change.
Climate activists, Pacific leaders and the region's young people see the ruling as leverage to demand carbon emissions reductions.
"Young people have the power, have the voices as well, to take [on] any countries or big emitter companies to be held accountable for their actions," Mario Liunamel, from the Vanuatu Climate Action Network (VCAN), said.
But two months on from the ruling, Pacific nations and advocates for climate action are at a crossroads.
The ICJ's advisory opinion is non-binding, but some want to use the ruling to launch legal action against large carbon-emitting and fossil fuel-exporting countries, including Australia.
Others are focused on more immediate goals, like using the ruling to strengthen their hand in climate negotiations — starting with November's United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP) talks in Brazil.
No legal action against Australia — for now
In the ICJ's 500-page advisory opinion, the court said a "clean, healthy and stable environment" was a human right.
Importantly for Australia, the judges found that fossil fuel production and consumption, the granting of fossil fuel exploration licences, and fossil fuel subsidies may constitute internationally wrongful acts.
Some Pacific Islanders now want to see their governments take legal action against countries like Australia — which has the controversial Woodside North West Shelf gas project — over fossil fuel exports.
Ralph Regenvanu, a senior Vanuatu government minister who championed the case from the start, has been considering the nation's next step.
It's an urgent decision for Vanuatu — a that had four major cyclones in the space of four years.
Ahead of the hearing, Mr Regenvanu said "all options are on the table" for the Pacific Island nation — including litigation against polluters.
But he has since told the ABC the Vanuatu government has made the decision not to "go down that path at this time".
Despite this, he said Vanuatu still expected high-emitting states to comply with the ICJ's advisory opinion.
In the capital Port Vila, youth worker Ethel Tama said litigation was a matter of survival for Pacific Island countries.
"This is one of the main things that Vanuatu should be looking at now, because most of our islands, we depend entirely on the seas to sustain our living," she said.
Back to the negotiating table
For young people in the Pacific, there are hopes the ICJ ruling will force future climate talks into a new direction.
Gael Thery, from Change Makers New Caledonia — a Nouméa-based non-government organisation — is optimistic.
"Pacific Islanders … tend to feel like we're abandoned," he said.
"So now, to see that our voice can be heard, is just a message of hope."
Margaret Young, director of Melbourne Law School's Institute for International Law and the Humanities, said the ICJ ruling would change the dynamic at the COP climate negotiations.
"There is now this legal baseline that all countries will be operating under at the COPs, and so the Pacific nations can ask for more," she said.
Mr Regenvanu also expects high-emitting countries to respond by submitting more ambitious "nationally determined contributions" — or plans for reducing emissions — at COP30.
For countries like Australia, the world's third-largest exporter of fossil fuels, that means a commitment not to open new coal and gas mines, he said.
"Australia is … perpetuating production decades into the future, when clearly it is a cause of greenhouse gas emissions which cause climate change," he said.
"The fact that Australia continues to engage in this behaviour is an internationally wrongful act, according to what the court said."
A Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade spokesperson said Australia was "carefully considering" the ICJ's advisory opinion.
Asked about the North West Shelf gas project last week, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the government would "act in Australia's interests but also in the interests of engaging in action on climate change".
"We know that gas has an important role to play in the transition," he said.
Mario Liunamel, from VCAN, said the ICJ decision would also help in "securing a lot of support funding" for Vanuatu projects addressing the impacts of climate change.
How will big emitters respond?
The ICJ advisory opinion will soon go back to the UN General Assembly, which will vote on adopting it as a resolution — a step that would further solidify the ruling as a legal precedent and add to pressure on big emitters.
Professor Young expects the resolution will be adopted.
"The General Assembly will look with favour on the legal certainty that this advisory opinion has provided and then countries will make what they will of the implications," she said.
She said it was "foreseeable" that countries could later start to bring claims for climate change reparations at the international level.
"For a claim in the future to be made good, an injured state would have to show that there's a nexus between the harm that they've suffered and the acts or omissions of a high-emitting state," Professor Young said.
While countries could be ordered to pay damages, there is no enforcement mechanism for ICJ rulings.
But Professor Young said there was a strong precedent of countries accepting judgements at the international level and paying court-ordered reparations.
"We do find that countries generally follow the rulings in contentious cases," she said.
