Latin America court calls for unified climate action as legal fights mount
The court holds jurisdiction over 20 Latin American and Caribbean countries and the advisory opinion, requested by Colombia and Chile, said that countries must also regulate and monitor corporate activities, especially those that generate greenhouse gases.
The opinion also said companies must adopt "effective" measures to combat climate change and states should discourage "greenwashing" and undue corporate influence in politics and regulations related to climate change.
States must also pass legislation for companies to act with "due diligence when it comes to human rights and climate change along their value chain."
States must also set binding GHG emission mitigation goals that "are as ambitious as possible" with concrete time frames. Cooperation must go beyond transboundary harm, the opinion said, and should go beyond mitigation and adaptation and cover all necessary measures to comprehensively respond to the climate emergency.
Maria Antonia Tigre, director of global climate change litigation at the Sabin Center at Columbia Law School, said that many countries rely on these opinions as precedent, even though they're non-binding.
"The (IACHR) is a little bit of a special case because it's highly influential in domestic courts," Tigre said, adding that regional supreme courts often cite IACHR opinions.
"The other aspect is if there is a contentious case on the topic, it will likely follow what's said in the advisory opinion," she said, citing a 2024 IACHR as an example.
In 2024, the IACHR ordered Peru to pay damages to a mining town, a decision that followed the 2017 interpretation of an 2017 advisory opinion the court issued that stated that a healthy environment was a human right.
The ruling builds on a global wave of climate litigation as countries, organizations and individuals are increasingly turning to courts for climate action.
Last year, the European Court of Human Rights said climate inaction violates human rights and a South Korean court said that the country's climate change law does not effectively shield future generations.
Vanuatu has also urged the top United Nations court to recognize the harm caused by climate change in its judgment on the legal obligation of countries to fight it and address the consequences of contributing to global warming. The ruling is expected this year.
The IACHR opinion noted that climate litigation is an "emerging field" but also an increasingly essential tool for holding states and companies accountable for climate change and obligations.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Reuters
a day ago
- Reuters
Trump imposes scaled-back copper tariff, US prices plunge
July 30 (Reuters) - The United States will impose a 50% tariff on copper pipes and wiring, President Donald Trump said on Wednesday, but details of the levy fell short of the sweeping restrictions expected and left out copper input materials such as ores, concentrates and cathodes. U.S. Comex copper futures plunged 19.5% after the announcement, quickly unwinding a premium over the London global benchmark that had grown in recent weeks as traders had assumed U.S. copper mines would see a financial benefit from the tariff. Trump first teased the tariff in early July, implying that it would apply to all types of the red metal, ranging from cathodes produced by mines and smelters to wiring and other finished products. Yet in a proclamation released by the White House, the administration said the tariff will apply only to semi-finished copper products and other products that copper is heavily used to manufacture, starting on Friday. "Copper is being imported into the United States in such quantities and under such circumstances as to threaten to impair the national security of the United States," Trump said in his proclamation. The tariffs will exclude copper scrap and copper concentrates, mattes, cathodes and anodes, some of the main products of copper mines and smelters. The move is essentially a boost to Chile and Peru, two of the world's largest copper miners. "The newly announced copper tariffs are far from universal tariffs that markets were concerned about," said Gracelin Baskaran, director of the critical minerals security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "It's less punitive than markets initially expected." The measure came after a U.S. investigation under Section 232, which Trump ordered in February. The report was delivered to the White House on June 30 by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, according to the proclamation. Trump said he may still impose further tariffs, and has asked Lutnick to provide an update on the domestic copper market by June 2026. At that point, Trump will evaluate whether to impose a phased universal import duty on refined copper of 15% starting in 2027, and of 30% starting in 2028, he said. Along with tariffs, the order calls for steps to support the domestic copper industry, including requiring 25% of high-quality scrap produced in the U.S. to also be sold within the country. Freeport-McMoRan (FCX.N), opens new tab, the largest U.S. copper producer, said it would comment after it reviewed Trump's order in detail. Chile's Codelco, the world's biggest copper producer, praised the exclusion of cathodes as a positive for the company and for Chile, which is the top supplier of refined copper to the U.S. BHP ( opens new tab, which operates the world's largest copper mine in Chile, and Antofagasta (ANTO.L), opens new tab, which ships copper from Chile to the U.S. and wants to build a U.S. copper mine, did not immediately reply to requests for comment.
The Independent
a day ago
- The Independent
US to share biometric data with Chile 'to track criminals,' Homeland Security's Noem says
The United States will deploy biometric technologies in partnership with Chile to control migration and disrupt criminal networks, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Wednesday during a visit to the South American nation. 'This arrangement is going to serve as a bridge to help Chile and the United States work towards bringing criminals to justice and knowing who is in our countries perpetuating crimes,' Noem said while signing the preliminary agreement with Chile's Security Minister Luis Cordero and Justice Minister Jaime Gajardo. 'This increased cooperation between our countries is extremely important to track criminals, terrorists and dangerous individuals,' she added from the capital of Santiago, while nearby thousands of residents heeded tsunami warnings to evacuate along the the country's Pacific coast. The plan comes as the Trump administration seeks to bolster regional cooperation in its clampdown against transnational criminal groups, including Tren de Aragua, a notorious Venezuelan gang designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the White House. The bilateral agreement allows Chilean officials to identify potentially dangerous migrants entering or exiting the country and share their biometric data, such as fingerprints and iris scans, with the Department of Homeland Security to prevent their travel to the U.S. "That information will be incredibly important as we go after these criminal activities," Noem said, praising past cooperation between the countries' intelligence agencies. Tren de Aragua has wreaked havoc across once-peaceful Chile in recent years — smuggling undocumented migrants across borders, running prostitution rings, trafficking drugs and terrorizing the population with grisly crimes. But Chilean authorities have fought back, bringing a number of gang members to trial in recent months. After spreading across Latin America on the heels of illegal migration, Tren de Aragua infiltrated the U.S. and inflamed domestic politics. The Federal Bureau of Investigation and Chile most recently teamed up to disrupt South American criminal networks allegedly responsible for a string of burglaries targeting the multimillion-dollar homes of high-profile celebrities and professional athletes in the U.S. and Europe. The suspects, among them Chilean nationals, are now facing charges in Florida.
BBC News
3 days ago
- BBC News
Ex-Colombian president Álvaro Uribe found guilty of witness-tampering
Álvaro Uribe has become the first former Colombian president to be convicted of a crime.A court in Bogotá found the 73-year-old, who was president from 2002 to 2010, guilty of witness-tampering and a fraud charge. He was convicted of attempting to bribe witnesses in a separate investigation into allegations that he had ties to right-wing paramilitaries, responsible for human rights charge carries up to 12 years in prison. Uribe is expected to appeal the verdict, having always maintained his innocence. Uribe is best known for mounting an aggressive offensive against leftist guerrilla group the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) during his tenure. He has always denied ties to right-wing former president sat shaking his head as the verdict was read out, AFP reported, in the trial that has seen more than 90 witnesses Secretary of State Marco Rubio has condemned the court's decision, accusing the country's judiciary of being former president's "only crime has been to tirelessly fight and defend his homeland," he wrote on the social media site, result comes more than a decade after Uribe was first charged in 2012. At that time, he accused a left-wing senator, Ivan Cepeda, of a plot against him. Uribe claimed Cepeda wanted to falsely link him to right-wing paramilitary groups involved in Colombia's internal armed the country's Supreme Court dismissed the former president's claims against Cepeda, instead investigating Uribe for the ties. The former president was then accused of contacting jailed ex-fighters and bribing them to deny connections to the paramilitary groups - tampering with key said he had wanted to convince the ex-fighters to tell the truth. Paramilitary groups emerged in Colombia in the 1980s with the stated goal of taking on poverty and marginalisation. They fought the Marxist-inspired guerrilla groups that had themselves battled the state two decades prior. Many of the armed groups developed in the standoff made an income from the cocaine trade. Violent and deadly fighting between them and with the state has produced lasting rivalries for trafficking routes and was praised by Washington for his hard-line approach to Farc rebels – but was a divisive politician whose critics say did little to improve the inequality and poverty in the signed a peace deal with Uribe's successor in 2016 though violence from disarmed groups persists in Colombia.
