The Inter-American Court of Human Rights has issued a groundbreaking advisory opinion that could reshape how we protect our planet’s future. On July 3, 2025, the Court emphasized “the importance of protecting the rights of nature in law to address climate change and other environmental crises.”
The Court’s decision marks a significant departure from traditional environmental law. As the Court explained, recognizing ecosystems’ rights “provides coherent and effective legal tools in the face of the triple planetary crisis to prevent existential damage before it becomes irreversible.”
Perhaps most powerfully, the Court noted that this recognition “makes it possible to overcome inherited legal concepts that conceived of nature exclusively as an object of property or an exploitable resource.”
The Court’s opinion goes beyond legal technicalities to recognize the human dimension of environmental protection. The decision “strengthens a paradigm centered on the protection of the ecological conditions essential for life and empowers local communities and indigenous peoples, who have historically been guardians of ecosystems and possess profound traditional knowledge of their functioning.”
A growing global movement
The Court acknowledged that this isn’t happening in isolation, noting “a growing normative and jurisprudential trend that recognizes nature as a subject of rights” reflected in countries across the Americas, “such as Canada, Ecuador, in some states of the United States of America, Bolivia, Brasil, Mexico, Panama and Peru.”
What this means
The Court’s final determination is clear and compelling: “The recognition of Nature and its components as subjects of rights constitutes a regulatory development that enhances the protection of the integrity and functionality of ecosystems in the long term, providing effective legal tools against the triple planetary crisis and facilitating the prevention of existential damage before it becomes irreversible.”
This historic opinion represents what experts call “a contemporary manifestation of the principle of interdependence between human rights and the environment,” reflecting our growing understanding that protecting nature’s rights is essential to protecting our own future on this planet.
The decision sets important standards for human rights interpretation across Latin America and beyond, potentially influencing how courts and governments approach environmental protection in the face of our current climate emergency.
