A Tale of Two Courts: The Right to a Healthy Environment, Climate Change, and Human Rights 

By Ecab Amor Vázquez and Theresa Amor-Jürgenssen^[1]

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20411374

Abstract: We are at the dawn of a new age for climate and environmental justice. In the face systemic and intergenerational threats to humanity, a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment is a necessary prerequisite for the comprehensive and effective protection of all human rights. In this context, this paper conducts a comparative analysis of the development of rights-based environmental protection and the right to a healthy environment that has taken place in the Inter-American and European systems of human rights, and, more specifically, recent pronouncements in both systems dealing with systemic and intergenerational environmental threats and the climate emergency. While the Inter-American Court of Human Rights has advanced an ecocentric and intergenerational approach to human rights protection through its 32nd advisory opinion and the landmark judgment of La Oroya, the European Court of Human Rights has continued to insist on an individualistic and anthropocentric approach. Though Strasbourg’s developments in the Climate cases opened the door for more expansive forms of standing, recent pronouncements in environmental and climate cases and admissibility decisions show the novel roadblocks an anthropocentric approach creates. This paper canters its discussion on what the authors consider one of the key differentiators that may explain the varied approaches of the systems: the recognition, or lack thereof, of the right to a healthy environment. In all, we argue that Strasbourg must learn from San José so that the future of climate change in these regional systems does not become a tale of two courts: one that protects (IACtHR) and one that regrets (ECtHR).

^[1] Ecab Amor Vázquez, PhD Candidate at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Co-Founder and President of NIKA, Member of the RICEDH; Theresa Amor-Jürgenssen, PhD Candidate at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Co-Founder and Legal Director of NIKA, Legal Research Lead at WYCJ, Member of the RICEDH.