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Climate Emergency and Human Rights: The Inter-American Court of Human Rights Published a Historic Advisory Opinion
On 3 July, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights issued its long-awaited Advisory Opinion No. 32 on the Climate Emergency and Human Rights. A decisive moment that will reverberate across Latin America and beyond. Initiated by a joint request from Colombia and Chile in 2023, this process saw extraordinary engagement from civil society and other actors. Over 260 written submissions and 160 oral interventions underscored the urgency and depth of concern.
This is far more than a legal milestone. The Court’s Advisory Opinion is a powerful political instrument that reshapes States' duties in the climate era. It establishes a robust legal framework compelling governments to integrate human rights obligations into climate action, setting clear standards that national policies can no longer ignore.
The opinion could start to influence state action almost immediately. As countries revise their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), they now face an explicit mandate to adopt ambitious mitigation targets grounded in science and equity and to ensure a just transition.
Equally significant is the Opinion’s potential to turbocharge strategic climate litigation. By applying principles like enhanced due diligence, the precautionary approach, and the prohibition of irreversible environmental harm, the Court has handed communities, activists, and lawyers across the region a powerful toolkit to hold governments and corporations accountable in local or international courts.
This Advisory Opinion is poised to influence the upcoming advisory process on climate change at the International Court of Justice, which the UN General Assembly requested in 2023. The Inter-American Court’s stance sends a clear political message: climate inaction can no longer be a political failure.
Advisory Opinion No. 32 detailed content
The Court's decision was categorical in recognising that we face an emergency whose impacts are countless and constitute an unprecedented risk to people and natural systems. The Court emphasised that the climate emergency can only be adequately addressed through urgent and effective actions with a human rights perspective. The Advisory Opinion also advanced in clarifying the scope of States' obligations regarding human rights. To do so, it first analysed States' obligations in general terms and then focused on specific substantive rights. In the more than two hundred pages of the decision, the Court established clear obligations for States to adopt ambitious climate targets, regulate the activity of businesses and corporations, and avoid irreversible harm to ecosystems and human life. Notably, the Court affirmed that the prohibition against causing irreversible environmental damage is a jus cogens obligation under international law.
Regarding the general obligations of States in the context of the climate emergency, the Court analysed in detail the obligations to respect, guarantee, and adopt measures for the realisation of economic, social, cultural, and environmental rights, adopt domestic legal provisions, and cooperate. In particular, regarding the duty to prevent that results from the obligation to guarantee, the Court emphasised that applying the precautionary principle complements prevention. Likewise, regarding the obligation to guarantee human rights, the Court indicated that, due to the extreme gravity of climate impacts and the urgency of avoiding irreparable harm, States must act with enhanced due diligence in the context of the climate emergency. The Court also emphasised that the climate emergency accentuates the need to allocate maximum available resources to protect people and groups who are vulnerable in situations of vulnerability and who are exposed to the most severe impacts of climate change. In the context of the climate emergency, vulnerability must be understood as a dynamic and contextual condition determined by the diversity and complexity of impacts associated with climate change.
Regarding the obligation to cooperate, the Court presented an analysis of utmost importance, which can even be applied beyond the regional sphere. In particular, the Court emphasised the insufficiency of resources made available to the States that most require them to advance climate action and the difficulties derived from public debt in this context.
The Court also called attention to States' obligation to cooperate in promoting an open and conducive international economic system that leads to sustainable development, particularly for developing countries, allowing them to address climate change better. Likewise, the Court noted that States can promote coordinated measures in areas such as progressive taxation, strengthening tax collection capacity, fighting tax evasion, corruption, and illicit financial flows. The obligation to cooperate implies: financing and economic assistance to less developed countries to contribute to a just transition; technical and scientific cooperation that involves communication and shared enjoyment of the benefits of progress; carrying out mitigation, adaptation, and reparation acts that can benefit other States; and establishing international forums and developing joint international policies.
Regarding States' obligations arising from specific substantive rights, the Court specifically analysed the rights to a healthy environment and other rights threatened or affected by climate impacts, such as life, personal integrity, health, private property, housing, freedom of residence and movement, water, food, work, social security, culture, and education. Likewise, the Court also analysed obligations derived from procedural rights.
When analysing obligations derived from the right to a healthy environment in the context of the climate emergency, the Court established that States must mitigate their emissions, but also that mitigation must respond to adequate goals and be regulated by a human rights-based strategy. On this, the Court emphasised that States must consider the effects of mitigation measures on people and ecosystems to ensure a just transition. In this sense, the Court noted that the strategy defined by the State must take into account the role of poverty and inequality in the production of greenhouse gas emissions, must tend toward their progressive elimination, and be based on the equitable distribution of economic and environmental burdens derived from mitigation measures to ensure that those who pollute more pay more.
Notably, the Court pointed out that within the framework of a just transition, it is necessary to prevent human rights violations that may occur due to the extraction of rare and critical minerals required for the energy transition.
The Advisory Opinion also dedicated a section to environmental defenders, declaring that States must protect those who defend land, climate, and human rights. It also emphasised the vital role of Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendant communities, and youth in addressing the climate emergency.
You can access the complete Court decision here.
