(San Francisco, July 7, 2025) – All members of the Organization of American States, including the United States and Canada, should take urgent steps to implement the July 3 advisory opinion on climate change and human rights by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Climate Rights International said today. Concluding that the world is in a climate emergency, the Court laid out binding climate obligations for countries and companies, including to protect environmental defenders and Indigenous Peoples.

Because protecting the global climate system is essential for the enjoyment of basic human rights, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights made it clear that the prohibition of irreversible climate and environmental harm must be interpreted as a peremptory norm of international law – in other words, an absolute obligation from which states cannot derogate (jus cogens).

“The opinion of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights is a landmark for international law and climate justice,” said Lotte Leicht, Advocacy Director at Climate Rights International. “For the first time, an international court has determined that people have the right to a ‘healthy climate.’ To address this, the court has laid out a clear path for urgent action through policy, legislation, and implementation to protect the human rights, lives, and livelihoods of present and future generations.”

Key elements of the Court’s opinion include:

• States must respect and protect the right to a “healthy climate” as part of the right to a heathy environment.
  
  
• As part of their mitigation and adaptation obligations, States must take all necessary measures to reduce risks stemming from both the degradation of the global climate system and the exposure and vulnerability of people and communities to the resulting harms.
  
  
• States must proactively identify and evaluate climate risks and adopt ambitious and preventative measures to avoid worst-case scenarios.
  
  
• States must mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by adopting policies and regulations that set clear mitigation targets, monitor their implementation, and regulate both their own actions and those of highly GHG polluting corporations.
  
  
• States are required to investigate and punish violations by climate polluting corporations and ensure reparations for harms, with higher scrutiny for companies with greater historical and current GHG emissions, including fossil fuel companies.
  
  
• States must require companies to conduct human rights and climate due diligence across their value chains, mandate public disclosure of emissions, enforce emission reduction actions, require alignment with national climate targets, and address greenwashing and undue political influence.
  
  
• States must ensure a fair, just, and rights-respecting renewable energy transition, including safeguarding human rights from violations linked to the extraction of critical minerals needed for the green transition.
  
  
• States have an obligation to provide reparations to persons and other states that are victims of transboundary harms resulting from high GHG emitting activities from their territory or under their jurisdiction.
  
  
• States must protect the rights of nature, since nature should not be seen exclusively as an object of property and a source of exploitation.

At a time when environmental defenders are facing increased physical and legal attacks, the Court recognized the fundamental role of defenders in strengthening democracy and the rule of law. States have a special duty of protection to ensure a safe and enabling environment for defenders to operate without threats, restrictions, violence, or the criminalization of their work. This includes preventing and investigating threats or attacks, and protecting defenders against arbitrary detention, online threats, and SLAPPs (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation).

The Court also emphasized that States must recognize and support Indigenous Peoples’ self-determination in climate-related decision making, while integrating the knowledge of Indigenous Peoples into climate and environmental strategies, ensuring fair benefit sharing, and protecting the full exercise of their procedural rights, including the right to Free, Prior and Informed Consent.

“Governments and major emitting companies, particularly those in the fossil fuel industry, whose decades of delay and deception have been a primary cause of the climate emergency, are on notice that they must act,” said Leicht. “This opinion makes it clear that if they don’t take urgent action, they will face laws, regulations, and lawsuits holding them accountable for the damage they are causing.”

The advisory opinion stems from a request made by Colombia and Chile in 2023 to clarify state obligations under the American Convention on Human Rights in the context of the climate emergency. The Inter-American Court, which interprets the American Convention and oversees compliance by over 20 nations in the Americas, made clear that its conclusions extend beyond regional law and are rooted in international human rights, environmental, and climate law. As the Convention is grounded in the Charter of the Organization of American States (OAS), the court said that its findings should not only apply to the signatories of the Convention but to all members of the OAS, which also includes the United States and Canada. While advisory opinions are not binding judgments, they carry substantial legal weight in shaping domestic and global jurisprudence.

The Court grounded its conclusions in a body of scientific and legal analysis, drawing on three public hearings with 185 delegations participating and a record 263 submissions from States, experts, academics, youth activists, Indigenous communities, civil society organizations, and other international representatives. Much of the court’s factual and scientific analysis is based on the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which it described as the best available science due to its methodological rigor and wide international recognition.

The opinion follows and expands on recent legal milestones concerning the intersection between international law, human rights, and climate change. In 2024, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Switzerland had violated human rights by failing to take sufficient action to mitigate the impact of climate change. That same year, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea determined that GHG emissions constitute marine pollution with transboundary effects, obligating States to regulate emissions even when harm crosses borders.

The advisory opinion noted the obligation of States to ensure that accurate, science-based information is widely accessible. This finding occurs amid growing concern over deliberate attacks on climate science, particularly by far-right political actors and GHG polluting corporations. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has withdrawn the United States from the Paris Agreement, dismantled US climate and environmental agencies, and blocked access to scientific climate information and government webpages that once helped inform communities and policymakers alike. It has also withdrawn funds for the renewable energy transition, while increasing support for fossil fuel expansion in the US and abroad.

Later this year, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) is expected to deliver its advisory opinion on States’ obligations in relation to climate change and the protection of the rights of present and future generations under international law. In May 2025, a request for an advisory opinion on climate change was filed before the African Court on Human and People’s Rights.

“This is a legal wake-up call for governments and high-polluting corporations to change their behavior,” said Leicht. “Communities, climate activists, and lawyers around the world will use the Court’s opinion to insist on bold government climate policies, corporate accountability, a just transition, and compensation for harms.”