Governments’ existing human rights obligations require them to do all they can to mitigate the harms of the climate crisis, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights concluded in a new advisory opinion issued Thursday. 

The seven-judge panel found that, “based on the best available science, the current situation constitutes a climate emergency.”

The planetary warming driving that emergency is caused by human activities that are “unevenly produced by States of the international community, which increasingly affect and seriously threaten humanity, especially the most vulnerable,” the court concluded.

In its official statement about the advisory opinion, the court also highlighted “the need to strengthen the democratic rule of law and to ensure that, in the context of the climate emergency, decisions are made in a participatory, open, and inclusive manner, that is science-based and recognizes local, traditional, and Indigenous knowledge.” 

The ruling follows a 2024 advisory opinion on climate change from the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. Both opinions underscore the scientific consensus on the causes and impacts of climate change, aligning governments’ legal obligations to act with scientific understanding.

The opinion also emphasized that countries have a special duty to protect environmental defenders who were killed at the rate of three per week in 2023, according to the nonprofit watchdog group Global Witness.

“There is no climate justice possible if there is no defense of those who advocate for the environment,” said Luisa Gómez Betancur, a senior attorney with the Center for International Environmental Law. “Guaranteeing the rights of environmental activists is fundamental for consolidating healthy democratic systems. The court says that activists are allies or partners of the states.”

She added: “Without advocates, we will not be able to face a crisis, and we will not be able to ensure dignity on the planet.” 

The opinion signals that states have clear legal obligations to address the impacts of global warming, said Elisa Morgera, the United Nations special rapporteur on climate change. Although the opinion is non-binding, it could shape how domestic courts rule on cases involving the obligations of governments to protect citizens from climate-related harms, she added.

Those obligations include providing public access to environmental information, adequately regulating corporations, restoring ecosystems and allocating the maximum available resources to vulnerable individuals and groups that are exposed to the most severe impacts of climate change.

The court’s opinion enables countries to look at the structural changes that are needed to “transform our economic models and prioritize tackling economic inequalities and extractivism,” she said, which could be transformative for the climate movement.

The opinion could even bolster efforts by civil society, including many Indigenous peoples, in “calling out any approach to climate action that is … a new colonial approach that supports those economic models and tries to continue in that very harmful direction that has brought us not only into a climate crisis, but, in fact, to multiple planetary crises,” Morgera said.

The United Nations has said the world faces three such crises, all interlinked: climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss.

The Costa Rica-based court was formed in 1959 under the auspices of the 34-member Organization of American States, and much of its work is related to the 1969 American Convention on Human Rights that has 20 countries, not including the United States, subject to its jurisdiction. The court’s judges are elected by OAS member states, and has issued several significant environment- and climate-related opinions and rulings.

A 2017 advisory opinion issued at the request of Colombia explicitly recognized for the first time a legal right to a healthy environment, stated that countries can be held responsible for cross-border harm and affirmed that damage to forests, rivers and other environmental impacts can violate human rights without direct personal harm. 

And in 2024, it ruled that the Peruvian government violated human rights by failing to regulate toxic emissions from state-permitted smelters near the town of La Oroya. Because that ruling enforces environmental rights in a binding judgment, advocates have called it a model for future climate and environmental accountability cases.

The request for an advisory opinion on climate change and human rights came in 2023 from Chile and Colombia, triggering three public hearings in the Caribbean and South America and eliciting 263 submissions from 613 parties, including states, communities, nonprofit organizations, academic institutions, one company and individuals.

Morgera said the opinion could also spur deeper understanding of what constitutes “fair relations between the Global North and Global South, and how we are experiencing human rights impacts of climate change in very disproportionate ways, but ways that are now fully foreseeable.”

In a groundbreaking step, the court also recognized that nature’s right to maintain its “essential ecological processes” contributes to a “sustainable development model that respects planetary boundaries” and future generations.

Recognizing nature’s rights, the court said, moves beyond old legal fictions that nature is only “property” and a resource to be used. An Earth-centered legal approach also empowers local communities and Indigenous peoples, who have long safeguarded ecosystems and hold deep traditional knowledge, the court added. 

The opinion noted that multiple countries, including Canada, Ecuador, Bolivia, Brazil, Mexico, Panama and Peru, as well as some U.S. states, have recognized nature’s rights in laws, resolutions and court rulings. 

“Moving toward a paradigm that recognizes ecosystems’ own rights is essential for protecting their long-term integrity and functionality and provides coherent and effective legal tools in the face of the triple planetary crisis, in order to prevent existential damage before it becomes irreversible,” the court said.    

Bob Berwyn

Reporter, Austria

Bob Berwyn an Austria-based reporter who has covered climate science and international climate policy for more than a decade. Previously, he reported on the environment, endangered species and public lands for several Colorado newspapers, and also worked as editor and assistant editor at community newspapers in the Colorado Rockies.

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Katie Surma

Reporter, Pittsburgh

Katie Surma is a reporter at Inside Climate News focusing on international environmental law and justice. Before joining ICN, she practiced law, specializing in commercial litigation. She also wrote for a number of publications and her stories have appeared in the Washington Post, USA Today, Chicago Tribune, Seattle Times and The Associated Press, among others. Katie has a master’s degree in investigative journalism from Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, an LLM in international rule of law and security from ASU’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, a J.D. from Duquesne University, and was a History of Art and Architecture major at the University of Pittsburgh. Katie lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with her husband, Jim Crowell.

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