The Protection of the Environment through International Human Rights Litigation: Taking Stock of Challenges and Opportunities in the Inter-American System

Abstract

Abstract This article seeks to critically analyse salient aspects of environmental protection through international litigation under the American Convention on Human Rights. It examines and places relevant recent developments in the practice of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights within broader trends in the practice of states and treaty organs of both universal and regional human rights systems equally dealing with issues at the intersection of international human rights law and environmental protection. In particular, it aims to take stock of Inter-American human rights-based environmental litigation by identifying opportunities and challenges presented by the aforementioned developments, both in conceptual and strategic terms. In this vein, it argues that, insofar as directness of environmental rights’ justiciability may prove ultimately inconsequential to state responsibility findings for omission to prevent private interference with environment-related human rights, the weaknesses of the Court’s current majority’s position should not pose an unsurmountable obstacle to Inter-American environmental litigation.