Children’s Rights and the Climate Emergency
Graphics provided by Our Children’s Trust.
The climate emergency matters for everyone. At today’s level of heating, the climate emergency is already harming the lives of millions of people across the Americas, especially children. For instance, Chile and Argentina have been besieged by a megadrought since 2008 and the 2023 winter global warming pushed temperatures in the Andean mountains to 37°C. In 2020, climate change-fueled Hurricanes Eta and Iota ravaged vast areas of Central America. This past summer, Canada experienced a fire season unlike any other. Blazes burned an estimated 18.4 million hectares from the country’s western province of British Columbia all the way east to Quebec. In total, hundreds of fires exceeded 10,000 hectares (39 square miles) burning an area roughly the size of North Dakota.
In response to our current emergency, we have joined Our Children’s Trust and Defensa Ambiental del Noroeste in submitting an amicus brief to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) on International Human Rights Day and the 75th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 10 December 2023. The amicus brief outlines the special obligations countries must undertake to address the climate emergency according to international human rights standards. We have presented the brief with the support of 21 youth who have brought rights-based climate cases in federal courts of the U.S. and Canada, together with 17 professional pediatrics associations representing over one million medical professionals in over 120 countries, including Colombia and Chile.
The amicus responds to the request for an advisory opinion by the governments of Colombia and Chile in January 2023. In the request, the governments asked the Court to clarify the scope of countries’ obligations to address the climate emergency’s impact on persons, nature, and survival on Earth.
This will be the first time that the most important Tribunal in the Americas rules on the specific measures states must adopt to protect human rights in the context of climate change — especially in relation to groups in special situations of risk, including children and future generations.
Fernando Ochoa, General Director of Defensa Ambiental del Noroeste, underscored the importance of the Court’s opinion, stating, “These are historic and very exciting times in different highest courts of the region. The ruling of the Inter-American Court will establish guidelines for the tribunals in the Americas. This might change the course of things in favor of the planet and the future generations.”
The amicus includes the most protective and emerging national and international jurisprudence as well as the best climate science and medical evidence. It emphasizes how critical it is for the Court to rely on the best available science when interpreting countries’ obligations to protect human rights in this context, especially regarding children. The brief stresses that the nonscience-based temperature targets set forth in the Paris Agreement of limiting global average surface temperature rise to 1.5°C or 2.0°C are categorically insufficient to protect children worldwide.
“Climate policies built upon a foundation of 1.5°C are dangerously unstable and constantly on the brink of an explosive and fiery collapse,” said Kelly Matheson, Deputy Director of Global Climate Litigation for Our Children’s Trust. “If this Court’s Advisory Opinion avoids reinforcing the misconception that 1.5°C is protective of human rights, it could set the world on a path that prioritizes solutions that are scientifically necessary to reverse climate change rather than politically-negotiated half-measures.”
The brief highlights numerous scientific findings that make clear what States need to do to effectively comply with their international human rights obligations derived from the American Convention and other Inter-American treaties. In this regard, to avoid catastrophic climate impacts and subsequent serious human rights violations, including into the future, States must make urgent and deep reductions of ongoing greenhouse gas emissions and lower the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide from the current concentration of about 420 parts per million (ppm) down to under 350 ppm. It further emphasizes that pathways for countries to achieve this 350 ppm target are feasible.