Climate Crisis and the Testing of International Human Rights Remedies: Forecasting the Inter-American Court of Human Rights

The climate crisis is already affecting and will continue to affect human and natural systems across the planet, especially in Global South geographies like Latin America and the Caribbean (LATAMEC). Undoubtedly, this jeopardises entire communities' enjoyment of human rights. In response to this ever-increasing challenge, international human rights courts and bodies have only recently started adjudicating some climate crisis concerns. So far, decisions from these organs have not resulted in specific obligations for states to appropriately address the climate crisis. Still, considering the rising number of petitions reaching their dockets and the possibility for these organs to mirror domestic courts' approaches to climate protection, it is just a matter of time before they order specific types of remedies. It could be said that the relevance of human rights remedies lies in their authoritative legal nature, which should prompt concrete state action. Yet, in the context of the climate crisis, few accounts have examined whether they are fit for purpose or could be enhanced. Against this backdrop, this chapter will interrogate if international human rights remedies can contribute, in any meaningful manner, to tackle the climate crisis and if they could be redesigned for improvement. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) case law with environmental dimensions will be scrutinised to provide a situated case study on how international human rights remedies are designed. The rationale of the IACtHR as a case study is that it has jurisdiction over most of LATAMEC, a climate-vulnerable region, rendering it an excellent geographical candidate to test the tools of international law. Since climate litigation is still extraneous to the IACtHR, it is argued that its indigenous peoples' rights case law is a good proxy for analytical extrapolation, given its rich discussions for collective environmental protection. This chapter will first introduce how environmental reparations have been dealt with in international human rights courts and bodies. Secondly, an analysis of the emergence of climate litigation before international human rights bodies and the associated remedial outcomes will be conducted. Thirdly, aiming to test the limits of human rights remedies in a concrete legal space, a more granular examination of the indigenous peoples' rights case law before the IACtHR will be elaborated. Fourthly, based on the effectiveness of remedies in the examined case law, this section will put forward three climate litigation scenarios (mitigation, adaptation, and loss and damage) to propose options for remedial design. Ultimately, this chapter aims to anticipate the future of climate remedies at the IACtHR and imagine them in a way that seriously considers remedial relevance and effectiveness.