(CN) – A groundbreaking four-day hearing before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ended on Wednesday, as the international court works to parse out if and to what degree governments are accountable for harms caused by climate change.
Colombia and Chile brought the landmark request for an advisory opinion to the court on Jan. 9, 2023. In a joint document signed by Antonia Urrejola, the foreign minister of Chile, and Alvaro Leyva, the foreign minister of Colombia, officials asked the court “to clarify the scope of state obligations … to respond to the climate emergency within the framework of international human rights law.”
The proceedings took place in Manaus, capital of the Brazilian state of Amazonas. They came in the wake of massive floods in southern Brazil earlier this month, which one research group called “an environmental and humanitarian tragedy.”
Amicus briefings were presented to the court by lawyers, as well as by various climate and Indigenous representatives from across the Americas.
Some of the arguments in the case focused on the twofold way in which government-permitted mining specifically violates Indigenous human rights in the Americas – namely, their rights to life and to defend their land against environmental harm.
Luciana Camacho, a human rights lawyer at the Catholic University of Bolivia San Pablo, drew a link between mining that impacts and degrades the environment and direct violence towards those who choose to exercise their collective rights, such as Indigenous people trying to defend their land.
“Where mining takes place is where the greatest number of attacks in the region are recorded against land defenders perpetrated by companies and by the state,” Camacho said. “Allowing extractive activity results in a situation that is reasonably foreseeable: a risk to the right to life. In this way, it must be understood that the right to defend territory and to defend the environment is one and the same.”
During the third day of proceedings, Patricia Gualinga Montalvo, a political advisor for the Kichwa people of Sarayaku, Ecuador, cited unprecedented mass flooding in her region in the past five years, which was then followed by drought worsened by the clear-cutting of forests to build highways for tourism.
“We are angry that those who are most responsible for the destruction of the planet are the ones profiting most from the climate crisis,” Gualinga Montalvo said, describing the situation as green colonialism.
“Everyone involved with the state leaves the Indigenous population defenseless while claiming they are the ones who have preserved the land,” she continued. “This is a paternalistic attitude. The resources never arrive, we are just being used.”
One of the more dire pleas came from Rosina Philippe, an elder of the Atakapa-Ishak/Chawasha Tribe in southeast Louisiana, who discussed the construction of one of the world’s largest liquid gas plants about three miles away from her village. The government is offering payouts to her community for the right to develop it.
“Continuing to commodify our resources threatens genocidal impacts,” Philippe said. “Everything that makes us possible is at stake.”
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights, along with the separate Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, are both part of the Organization of American States, a group of 35 independent states in the Americas whose main pillars are democracy, human rights, security and development. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights is responsible for overseeing compliance with the American Convention on Human Rights, adopted on Nov. 22, 1969.
The court will issue its advisory opinion by the end of the year, based on an interpretation of past environmental treaties such as the Paris and Escaz agreements, both of which were mentioned various times throughout the proceedings. The Paris Agreement, adopted in 2015 by 196 parties, legally holds the participating parties accountable for substantially reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The Escaz Agreement, adopted in 2018 by 25 Latin American and Caribbean countries, guarantees transparency in environmental decision-making through rights to access of information and proper consultation.
This court’s opinion will provide a crucial legal framework for addressing climate change and human rights in the future. This month’s hearing was the second of two before the court, the first of which occurred in April in Bridgetown, Barbados.
Source: Courthouse News Service