TAKING ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND CULTURAL RIGHTS (ESCR) SERIOUSLY

THE JUSTICIABILITY OF ENVIRONMENTAL RIGHTS BEFORE THE INTER-AMERICAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS

Abstract

Environmental degradation and its transboundary negative externalities produce harmful effects at both regional and local levels, contexts in which such risks are primarily mitigated and addressed in the aftermath of environmental and climate-related emergencies. The expansion of protective standards must therefore be articulated across regional and local scales in order to produce genuinely global normative effects. The present study seeks to analyze the evolution of the justiciability of environmental rights within the Inter-American Human Rights System (IAHRS), with particular emphasis on contentious cases adjudicated by its judicial organ, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. It further examines the progressive interpretation of the American Convention on Human Rights in correlation with the strengthening of pro persona and pro natura protective standards of protection, aiming to describe the theoretical and jurisprudential state of the art of environmental protection within the Inter-American Court’s case law. The central hypothesis advanced is that the indivisibility of civil and political rights and economic, social, cultural, and environmental rights (ESCR) enables a holistic exegesis of human rights and a dynamic interpretation of the American Convention. This interpretative approach has been consolidated through both res judicata and res interpretata effects in the Court’s jurisprudence since Lagos del Campo v. Peru (2017). The research adopts a qualitative methodology, operationalized through bibliographical and documentary review. It concludes that the emerging ecosystemic dimension in both the advisory and contentious jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court—together with the correlation established between environmental obligations and the rights to life, personal integrity (Advisory Opinion No. 23/17), and human dignity, albeit framed within an anthropocentric paradigm— has produced a normative expansion of environmental protection at the regional level. Such development radiates beyond the Inter-American sphere, influencing other human rights systems (both global and regional) as well as constitutional courts, through an increasingly institutionalized dialogue among judicial bodies.