Adjudicating Extinction? Human Rights Bodies and the Challenge of Biodiversity Loss

Biodiversity degradation increasingly threatens the enjoyment of fundamental human rights, such as the right to life, health, food, and cultural life. Individuals, communities, and non-governmental organizations have therefore begun to invoke human rights complaint mechanisms to seek redress and change harmful state behavior. These procedures offer important avenues for norm development, accountability, and recognition of the interdependence between human rights and environmental protection. However, their capacity to effectively tackle biodiversity loss remains disputed. Structural limitations—such as the anthropocentric focus of human rights law, the requirement of individual victim status, and the lack of enforcement powers—restrict the systemic impact of case-by-case adjudication. The paper analyzes cases involving biodiversity loss and environmental harm brought before the UN treaty bodies and the European Court of Human Rights and assesses their impact on the responding states and other actors. The study offers new insights into the effectiveness of individual complaint procedures in governing one of the nine critical Earth system processes.