Beyond Words – What the Inter-American Court’s Advisory Opinion Means for Participation, Transparency, Justice, and Environmental Human Rights Defender Safety

The views expressed in this blog are not the views of the Committee to Support Implementation and Compliance but my own personal views.

Across Latin America and the Caribbean, the climate emergency is undeniable. Communities face extreme heat, wildfires, hurricanes, floods, and drought, yet many still lack access to timely climate information, opportunities for effective participation in clean-energy and resilience planning, and protection when they speak out against polluters. In July 2025, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights issued Advisory Opinion AO-32/25 at the request of Chile and Colombia to address States’ human rights obligations in the climate context. Although not a legally binding judgment, it is the region’s most detailed explanation of States’ human rights obligations in climate governance and will be persuasive before national courts across the region.

This landmark advisory opinion recognizes a right to a safe and stable climate; calls on governments to  reinforce due diligence,  including oversight of private actors; and sets out the need to adopt clear procedural guarantees, namely access to information, public participation, and access to justice in making climate decisions; as well as outlining a special duty to protect environmental human right defenders. As the Court states, “Respect for and guarantee of procedural rights is an essential requirement to ensure the legitimacy and effectiveness of climate action.” The opinion urges reform of laws, institutions, and practices, while outlining the importance of regional agreements like the Escazu Agreement to support implementation of these obligations.

How the advisory opinion advances the Escazú Agreement

The Escazú Agreement, in force since April 22, 2021, establishes a regional framework for environmental democracy, including openness and participation (Articles 5-7), access to justice (Article 8), and protection of environmental human rights defenders (Article 9). AO-32/25 does not displace this framework; instead, it fortifies and specifies the implementation of obligations in the climate context. The Advisory Opinion makes it clear that the Court expects authorities to “generate, collect, publicize and disseminate environmental information… in a systematic, proactive, timely, regular, accessible and comprehensible manner,” and insists that “States must guarantee meaningful participation… in decision-making and policymaking that may affect the climate system.” It cautions that “procedural rules must not unjustifiably prevent or hinder” courts from hearing claims and endorses flexible evidentiary tools, including the “reversal of the burden of proof” where the State or a project holds critical data. Most saliently, the Court “recognizes that States have a special duty of protection” toward environmental defenders and, echoing the Escazú Agreement, requires a “safe and enabling environment… free from threat, restriction and insecurity.”

The Escazú Agreement and AO-32/25 are mutually reinforcing. The Escazú Agreement delineates the institutional and procedural infrastructure for reform and capacity building. AO-32/25 articulates the rights-based standards against which legislative, regulatory, and judicial practice should be assessed in climate matters. Across Latin America and the Caribbean,  emerging jurisprudence already invokes the Escazú Agreement to expand access to information, strengthen participation, and facilitate standing – directions that AO-32/25 now anchors within a regional, rights-based framework.

In Mexico, the Supreme Court, in Amparo en Revisión 54/2021 of February 9, 2022, expanded locus standi, mandated early and public participation, applied dynamic burdens of proof, and ordered a cumulative environmental impact assessment for the Veracruz port expansion referencing the agreement. In Brazil, the Superior Tribunal de Justiça in REsp 1.857.098-MS, treated the Escazú Agreement as persuasive authority notwithstanding non-ratification, compelling active transparency and periodic public reporting. In Ecuador, the Constitutional Court’s Los Cedros decision (1149-19-JP/21) grounded access to information and early, informed participation in the agreement, and annulled authorizations that disregarded those guarantees. In the Caribbean, the Caribbean Court of Justice in Gaskin v. Minister of Natural Resources cited the Escazú Agreement to protect public-spirited environmental litigation by declining to award costs. Together, these lines of authority demonstrate Escazú’s doctrinal influence. The advisory opinion AO-32/25 supplements this with climate specific rationale and a common vocabulary for courts and agencies to consolidate and extend these practices.

The opportunity: legal reform and real implementation

The Advisory Opinion and the Escazú Agreement together create a concrete agenda for legislatures, regulators, and courts to improve practice and develop and adopt new policies. On environmental human rights defender protection, the Opinion moves beyond ad hoc approaches, urging “appropriate public policy instruments” and “domestic legal provisions and practices” to ensure that the defense of rights can be exercised freely and safely. This lays the foundation for Governments to  consider actions like adopting a national protection protocol that includes rapid risk assessments, urgent protection measures, anti-SLAPP safeguards, and gender-responsive procedures, opportunities  to designate a national focal point or institution  to coordinate responses, and to publish disaggregated annual data on threats and investigations with corresponding budgetary support. These steps would implement the Escazú Agreement’s Regional Action Plan on Environmental Human Rights Defenders for 2024 to 2030.

On access to justice, the Advisory Opinion invites procedural reform that uses interpretations that are “most favorable to access to justice.” This provides an opportunity for legislatures to adopt broad legal standing in civil procedural laws and to establish protective or no adverse costs for bona fide public interest cases, in combination with rules on dynamic or reversed burdens of proof when the State or project proponents hold critical evidence.

Finally, on transparency and participation, there is an opportunity to ensure proactive, machine-readable portals for greenhouse gas inventories, climate budgets, and monitoring data, and to guarantee that information on climate risk is shared as part of public participation. The public should have early, iterative, and informed participation in the development of policies, long term strategies, and just transition plans, with authorities required to provide clear reasons explaining how public inputs were considered in these plans.

Together, the Advisory Opinion and the Escazú Agreement provide a coherent human rights approach to climate change – one that treats participation, transparency, justice, and the protection of environmental human rights defender safety as non-negotiable infrastructure for effective climate action.

Sources (primary judgment pages & authoritative summaries)

• SCJN (Mexico), AR 54/2021 — Escazú quoted in paras. 121, 123, 213. cepal.org
• STJ (Brazil), REsp 1.857.098-MS — Escazú as interpretive support for active transparency. cepal.org
• CC (Ecuador), 1149-19-JP/21 (Los Cedros) — detailed reliance on Escazú arts. 5 & 7. cepal.org
• CCJ (Guyana), Gaskin v. Minister of Natural Resources — cites Escazú to justify no-costs order in public-interest environmental case. cepal.org