Published June 23, 2025
By Nikki Reisch, Director of the Climate and Energy Program at the Center for International Environmental Law, Luisa Gomez Betancur, Senior Attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law, and Upasana Khatri, Attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law.
Cover Photo Credit: Cayla Nimmo (EarthRights)
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) is once again poised to make history. In the coming weeks, it will issue a landmark opinion elaborating what human rights law requires of States in the face of the climate emergency. Its pronouncement could not come at a more important moment for putting human rights and human rights defenders at the center of responses to the climate crisis, for reasserting the rule of international law and the legal basis for climate justice, or for holding fossil fuel companies and other corporate polluters driving the crisis to account.
The global context underscores how vital and timely this opinion is.
Rights are at ever-greater risk: The world is being rocked by wars, escalating conflict and precarity, fossil-fueled climate destruction and toxic pollution, and rising authoritarianism and disinformation that feeds the cycle of violence, threatening our ability to prevent environmental and social collapse — let alone protect the rights of present and future generations.
Latin America and the Caribbean are in the climate hot seat: As the world gears up for the global climate talks (COP30) November 10–21 in Brazil, and as Caribbean island states continue to press the case for climate justice in international courts and negotiations, the region is already in the climate spotlight. The Court’s words will carry even more weight this year and beyond, as negotiators seek to bolster their demands with legal obligations rooted in human rights law.
Time to defossilize the economy and make polluters repair the harm: Climate change is not a whodunnit. We know that fossil fuels are driving the crisis, and we know its devastating consequences. In the face of the undeniable facts, calls for fossil fuel phaseout, demands for climate justice, and campaigns to make polluters pay are only growing louder by the day. As of June 2025, at least 17 countries have expressed their support for the development of a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty (FFNPT), and the latest report of the UN Special Rapporteur on climate change and human rights makes clear that upholding rights requires defossilizing the economy. No more lies, defossilize.
If the Court clarifies that human rights law requires States to take concrete, science-aligned steps to prevent the known causes and redress the devastating consequences of climate change — including by phasing out fossil fuels and holding corporate polluters accountable for climate harm — it would embolden communities and negotiators alike to assert ambitious action and pursue climate justice. It would also help bring an end to the era of impunity for major polluters.
The Court has already made history — through the people-centered process it has led in considering the request before it. The hearings held in Barbados and in Brazil in 2024 were unlike any before them: deeply participatory, centered on the lived experiences of those most impacted by climate change, and informed by their expertise on climate solutions. More than 260 amicus briefs were submitted. Over 160 delegations took part in the hearings. Indigenous and Afro-descendant Peoples, frontline communities, and civil society groups played a central role, bringing powerful testimony, legal insight, and moral clarity to the Court.
The transformative potential of the forthcoming advisory opinion lies both in its expected content and in the mobilization that surrounds it. The opinion will serve as a blueprint for climate litigation at the local, regional, and national courts, as well as a foundation for climate policymaking, grounding local legislation and global negotiations in legal obligation. It will also serve as a testament to the lived experiences and expertise of those on the front lines of climate harm and at the forefront of climate justice, affirming the peril that climate change represents for human rights and the promise of human rights-based climate action and remedy.
The Inter-American Court’s advisory opinion is not being handed down in a vacuum. It joins a rising tide of climate litigation and a global movement for climate justice, accountability, and reparations for climate harm. Campaigns to make polluters pay are gaining traction. Communities are turning to courts in greater numbers, demanding action rooted in law.
It is also being handed down as part of a series of advisory opinions on climate change requested from international courts:
- In May 2024, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) issued its advisory opinion on climate change and the ocean.
- The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is expected to deliver its own advisory opinion in the coming months.
- And the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights has also been asked to weigh in on climate-related legal obligations.
Together, these legal efforts are shaping a new understanding of States’ legal responsibilities in the climate crisis.
Why the Inter-American Court Opinion Matters
What sets the Inter-American Court apart is its track record of leadership in progressive interpretation of human rights law.
With this advisory opinion, the Court has the opportunity to:
- Set a high bar for human rights-based climate action.
- Signal to policymakers and courts across the Americas and around the world what climate measures human rights law requires States and corporations to take, grounded in the best available science.
- Define legal standards for holding States — and corporate polluters — accountable for climate-destructive conduct.
- Affirm the right to remedy and reparation for climate-related harm.
Because this advisory opinion interprets binding human rights law, the Inter-American Court will be setting legal guidelines that none of the Members of the Organization of American States — more than 30 countries across Latin America and the Caribbean — can ignore.
Its relevance also extends globally because the fundamental human rights at issue — such as the rights to life, self-determination, health, and a healthy environment — are protected not just under the American Convention on Human Rights, but under many other international treaties and instruments, national constitutions, and local laws.
Building on a Legacy of Leadership
The Court has already made history with its past jurisprudence and has repeatedly shown itself to be a leader in the progressive development and interpretation of the law. Its 2017 advisory opinion recognized the right to a healthy environment as a fundamental human right and affirmed States’ responsibility for cross-border environmental harm. More recently, in its judgment in the contentious case of La Oroya v. Peru, the Court recognized the collective right to reparations for industrial pollution. We expect that leadership to continue with this opinion.
What We Will Be Watching For
As we wait for the Court’s opinion, here are a few key issues that many will be watching:
- Climate as a human rights crisis: We expect the Court to reaffirm that climate change affects the full range of rights of present and future generations and gives rise to concrete obligations under human rights law, reinforcing State and corporate duties to prevent the conduct we know causes climate change and remedy its destructive consequences. Crucially, these duties neither start nor end with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Paris Agreement. Human rights law may require more.
- Accountability and remedy: The Court is expected to address State obligations to regulate corporate polluters and ensure remedy for climate harm — meaning access to justice and full reparation for the consequences of climate change — including by and from the fossil fuel and agroindustries that have contributed the most to climate destruction and obstruction of climate action. Reparation is a legal duty, not an act of charity. That is why mechanisms dependent on voluntary contributions, such as the Loss and Damage Fund, do not adequately uphold human rights or satisfy States’ human rights obligations.
- Fossil fuels and root causes: The central cause of climate change is fossil fuels. The Court cannot meaningfully answer the questions before it without acknowledging that States must halt the expansion of fossil fuels and phase them out. And that requires taking proven, science-aligned measures to rapidly reduce the production and use of oil, gas, and coal – –not relying on speculative technologies such as carbon dioxide removal or ineffective schemes, like carbon capture and storage or carbon offsets, which only prolong fossil fuel dependence and introduce new risks to people and the planet.
- Protection for defenders:
There can be no climate action or climate justice in a climate of fear, and there is no livable future unless those who work to defend it can live free. The Court is uniquely positioned to make clear that States and corporate actors must do more to safeguard those who defend our planet, without whom there would be no climate to protect, nor any prospects of holding State and corporate polluters accountable. We expect the Court to compile and harmonize the best available standards for protecting environmental defenders in the region, including those outlined in the Escazú Agreement, as well as existing international standards and those already established by the Court itself. Furthermore, we expect the Court will encourage the countries in the region to ratify the Escazú Agreement.
A Turning Point for Climate Justice
As an authoritative interpretation of binding international human rights law, the Inter-American Court’s advisory opinion will add substantial weight to mounting demands for climate justice and accountability that are increasingly impossible to ignore.
And in doing so, it will remind us that human rights are not abstract ideals. They are lived realities. They are tools for survival. And they must guide us through the defining crisis of our time.
