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The human right to a safe climate

Nature Sustainability volume 8, pages 1423–1424 (2025)Cite this article

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The advisory opinions by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 2025 mark a turning point in aligning international law with climate science. Both affirm climate change as a human-caused existential threat1,2.

The IACtHR recognized the right to a safe climate and the disproportionate harms to vulnerable groups (for example, women, Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendants, peasant farmers, small-scale fishers and youth) that worsen inequalities3,4. The ICJ declared that a clean, healthy and sustainable environment is a precondition for other human rights (such as life and health) and affirmed states’ duties to prevent significant climate harm — placing 1.5 °C within legal obligation, shaped by science and Conference of the Parties (COP) decisions5,6,7. This fills a gap left by the United Nations Climate Convention despite recognition of this principle in the 1992 Rio Declaration. The ICJ also stressed the need to interpret climate obligations coherently with other multilateral agreements (for example, United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and the Convention on Biological Diversity), human rights law and customary international law5. Although the ICJ stopped short of extending this coherence to trade and investment agreements, as one dissenting opinion proposed, both rulings relied on scientific evidence brought by plaintiffs, countering the rise of anti-climate and pro-fossil fuel misinformation.

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References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CRETUS-EqualSea Lab, University of Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de Compostela, Spain

    Sebastian Villasante

  2. Marine and Antarctic Research Centre for Sustainability and Innovation, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa

    Lynne Shannon

  3. Carroll School of Management, Boston College, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Sandra Waddock

  4. Instituto de Investigaciones en Recursos Naturales, Agroecología y Desarrollo Rural, Universidad Nacional de Río Negro, San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina

    Lucas A. Garibaldi

  5. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, Instituto de Investigaciones en Recursos Naturales, Agroecología y Desarrollo Rural, Río Negro, Argentina

    Lucas A. Garibaldi

  6. Global Science, WWF, Washington, DC, USA

    Nathan J. Bennett

  7. People and the Ocean Specialist Group, Commission on Environmental, Economic and Social Policy, International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Gland, Switzerland

    Nathan J. Bennett

  8. Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

    Nathan J. Bennett

  9. Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands

    Joyeeta Gupta

  10. IHE-Delft Institute for Water Education, Delft, Netherlands

    Joyeeta Gupta

  11. CORDIO East Africa, Mombasa, Kenya

    David Obura

  12. Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

    Albert V. Norström

  13. Future Earth Secretariat, Stockholm, Sweden

    Albert V. Norström

  14. Department of Sociology and Human Geography, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    Karen O’Brien

  15. Ikerbasque, Basque Science Foundation, Bilbao, Spain

    Unai Pascual

  16. Basque Centre for Climate Change, Bilbao, Spain

    Unai Pascual

  17. Keough School of Global Affairs, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, USA

    Arun Agrawal

Authors
  1. Sebastian Villasante
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  2. Lynne Shannon
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  3. Sandra Waddock
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  4. Lucas A. Garibaldi
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  5. Nathan J. Bennett
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  6. Joyeeta Gupta
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  7. David Obura
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  8. Albert V. Norström
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  9. Karen O’Brien
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  10. Unai Pascual
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  11. Arun Agrawal
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sebastian Villasante.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Cite this article

Villasante, S., Shannon, L., Waddock, S. et al. The human right to a safe climate. Nat Sustain 8, 1423–1424 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-025-01700-y

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