Upgrading Environmental Rights - <p><em>La Oroya</em> and its Significance for a Safer Climate</p>

Abstract

In Community of La Oroya v. Peru the IACtHR for the first time found a violation of the autonomous right to a healthy environment in a non-indigenous context related to the long-lasting environmental contamination of a community by toxic substances. La Oroya lays foundational principles that will likely shape the content and direction of environmental and climate change litigation and jurisprudence in the Americas. This historic judgment provides a robust basis for anticipating how the Court will handle the specification of environmental rights within the climate emergency and how it may accordingly inform States’ human rights obligations.

Keywords

• Inter-American Court of Human Rights
• Klimarecht
• Klimaschutzrecht
• climate change
• Klimaschutzrecht