Countries must protect human right to a stable climate, court rules | Environment
The upper court has decided.
By announcing the publication An important advice on climate change On Thursday, Nancy Hernández López, President of the Human Rights Court of Human Rights (Iachr) between Americans, said that climate change carries “extraordinary risks özellikle especially felt by people who are already vulnerable.
The Court says that states have legal obligations to protect future generations from the effects of climate disintegration in the powerful and extensive 300 -page document that determines the perspective of climate emergency and human rights. This includes “emergency and effective” actions to cut off greenhouse gas emissions, adapt, internationally cooperation, and protect climate disinformation threatens.
The investigation was provoked by Colombia and Chile, who asked what legal responsibilities in 2023 to cope with the climate change and to prevent people from violating human rights.
Costa Rica -based court received hundreds of applications and held a series of trials in the cities of Brasília and Manaus of Barbados and Brazil last year.
A wide variety of states and regional bodies, academics and non -governmental groups, as well as individual victims of climate destruction – were allowed to participate.
“The evidence we see and received during the hearing and written applications show that there is no margin for indifference,” López said.
“Success depends on all of us.”
The establishment of Iachr is to interpret and implement the American Convention on Human Rights, a treaty approved by members of the American States Organization (OAS). However, its newly published view takes into account a wide range of national, regional and international laws and principles. And confirms that the findings are not only for the signatures of the contract, but also to 35 members of OAS, including the US and Canada.
The court confirmed a healthy environment and said that it includes a stable climate right for the first time.
This means that states have legal obligations for regulating emissions arising from public and private organizations.
The Court said that all businesses have the responsibility not to harm human rights, but those who have spread large amounts of greenhouse gas emissions in the past or present have a certain responsibility for the risk of their activities ”. The discovery, removal, transport and processing of fossil fuels selects, cement production and agricultural industry.
States should determine more difficult requirements for such sectors, changes in business operating conditions, taxation, only contributions to transition plans and strategies, investment in education, adaptation measures and losses and damage. If companies do not comply, pollutant activities should stop and states demand compensation for the damage causing the climate.
He added that states, transnational companies and holdings should pass the laws to take into account the emissions of their subsidiaries.
States are also obliged to provide a fair transition to a cleaner society, and it should ensure that it does not violate human rights on its own, for example when mining for critical minerals required for electric vehicles.
“This is not just about the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy,” he said, Asociación Para La Decensa del Ambiente (Aida), an environmental law organization working in Latin America. “This corrects historical inequality and is an opportunity for a structural transformation that protects people and ecosystems.”
Iachr also acknowledged that it was obliged to harm the ecosystems caused by the rights of nature and the climate change of states.
Luisa Gómez, the senior lawyer of the International Environmental Law Center, said the court’s climate crisis on the rights of people and ecosystems and those responsible for guaranteeing these rights should react. “He sends a clear message that the punishment for climate cannot be tolerated anymore.”
The American Court of Human Rights is the second of the four upper courts issuing an opinion on climate change.
The International Maritime Law Court, the first court to publish its opinion, concluded last year that greenhouse gases were pollutants that disrupt the maritime environment and that states had a legal responsibility to control them.
The International Court of Justice held his own opinion last December and is expected to publish in the coming months. Meanwhile, the African Human and Folk Rights Court has just begun.
These documents are not technically binding, but are considered authorized because they summarize the existing law. And they are expected to be used in future cases and political negotiations.
Viviana Krsticevic, General Manager of the Justice and International Law Center, a Human Rights NGO that supports Colombia and Chile’s consultation view, said that the climate map across the community, including a series of national climatic strategies for the new view, which may be very important for the COP30, said “a very rich road map”.
