Groundbreaking Legal Opinion from Inter-American Human Rights Court Declares States’ Obligations to Address the Climate Emergency
San Jose, Costa Rica, 4 July 2025 — Yesterday the Inter-American Court of Human Rights published its groundbreaking legal opinion declaring that States have a wide range of human rights obligations to address what the Court unanimously agreed to be a real and escalating climate emergency. In order to protect and guarantee multiple human rights including the newly articulated right to a healthy climate, States must undertake urgent and effective actions on mitigation, adaptation, and progress toward sustainable development through a lens of resilience and human rights.
The Opinion is a monumental development in the application of international human rights law to climate change. The Inter-American Court’s willingness to step up to the plate and issue its comprehensive legal proclamations necessary to preserve human rights in the face of the climate emergency should serve as an inspiration to courts and litigants everywhere.
Among other conclusions, Advisory Opinion (OC-32/25) sets a high (“reinforced”) standard of due diligence on all OAS members to take near-, medium-, and long-term actions to strengthen resilience and to protect human rights. In addition to declaring that States have binding obligations to implement domestic climate policies, the Opinion also declared that States have duties to cooperate internationally on climate measures (noting specifically the UN Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer as a model), and to protect citizens’ access to justice by adapting judicial procedural requirements to the climate context, strengthening the democratic rule of law, and establishing specific protections for environmental defenders and for other vulnerable groups disproportionately impacted by climate change.
“Nation states, which have the power to implement mitigation and adaptation policies, and which will gather in the Amazon for COP30 this year, have a duty to defend the rights of their citizens. The Opinion of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights is not just a safeguard for litigants: it is a powerful message to negotiators to fight for the rights of their peoples,” said Romina Picolotti, founder of the Center for Human Rights and the Environment and former Minister of Environment for Argentina.
Compliance with these obligations is necessary to protect and guarantee multiple human rights including the right to a healthy climate, which the Court articulated for the first time in the Opinion. This right, though closely connected to the right to a healthy environment, functions autonomously to protect present and future generations of humanity, as well as the Rights of Nature (which the Opinion also embraced for the first time). Emphasizing the interdependence of essential natural processes with the continuation of human life and the life of other species, the Court also declared that human actions which irreversibly damage the “vital balance” of the common ecosystem constitute a violation of international law at its highest level.
The Court’s reasoning was guided by the best available science, climate and human rights law, and the concept of climate resilience. The Opinion identifies methane and other short-lived climate pollutants as powerful contributors to climate change and praises the Montreal Protocol’s role as one of the most successful international environmental agreements in history.
“The Opinion is destined to become one of the most important legal documents of the century. It provides the roadmap for litigators and judges throughout the world, giving them the guidance they need to effectively address the climate emergency,” said IGSD President Durwood Zaelke. “The Court stresses the need for speed and the need for binding mitigation at national and global level. The Court recognizes that promises and pledges are not a substitute for binding legal requirements,” he added.
States are legally required to comply with the Opinion, as the highest authoritative interpretation of binding human rights obligations. Under the doctrine of ‘conventionality control,’ all domestic authorities—in judicial, legislative, and executive functions—must act in conformity with the Court’s pronouncements.
For additional information, see:
- Original Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos Opinión Consultiva OC-23/24 Emergencia Climática y Derechos Humanos.
- IGSD’s 5-page summary of the Advisory Opinion.
- IGSD’s 23-page highlights of the Advisory Opinion.
- IGSD Press Release As Climate Crisis Escalates, Inter-American Human Rights Court to Issue Landmark Climate Opinion on States Obligations (30 June 2025)
For media inquiries, please contact Katie Super at ksuper@igsd.org
