Climate lawsuits build as a Latin American court hears largest case ever

Latin America's human rights court leads global climate litigation wave, setting precedent for government obligations to combat climate change.

Latin America's human rights court holds a final hearing in Brazil on March 29 in a case that's part of a global wave of climate litigation, as several international courts prepare first-time opinions on what countries must do to combat climate change.

The rulings could also set off a wave of new litigation brought by citizens, businesses and governments. However, the enforcement of such decisions is largely untested.

A Swiss parliamentary committee last week rejected a ruling for example by a top European court that said Switzerland had violated the human rights of its citizens by not doing enough to prevent climate change.

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR), which holds jurisdiction over 20 Latin American and Caribbean countries, hopes to issue its advisory opinion by year's end, top justice Nancy Hernandez Lopez told Reuters. The final hearing on Wednesday is being held in the Amazon rainforest city of Manaus.

Already last week, the international tribunal set up under the U.N. Law of the Seas decided that carbon emissions amount to marine pollution and that countries must go beyond the Paris Agreement to protect oceans. Next year, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) is expected to have its say and could attempt to draw the earlier court decisions into one global ruling applicable to all U.N. members.

"The reason for (the wave of litigation) is people's deep frustration that their elected representatives are not taking rapid and fair climate action," said Lucy Maxwell, co-director of the nonprofit Climate Litigation Network. "The climate litigation landscape is really broad and diverse and massively growing."

While multilateral court opinions apply only to the states under their jurisdiction, they are all grappling with the same central question: Are governments obligated to protect people from climate change? And if so – to what degree?