Introduction to the Symposium on Advisory Opinion AO-32/25 on the Climate Emergency and Human Rights: Climate Orders – The Inter-American Court Speaks

[Erick Guapizaca Jiménez is an S.J.D. candidate at the University of Michigan Law School, a lecturer at the Universidad Internacional del Ecuador, and an Assistant Editor with Opinio Juris]

Once again, the Inter-American Court stands at the edge of history with the Advisory Opinion 32/25 (AO-32/25). This time, the Court addresses a monster of our own making, climate change. Responding to the call of a crisis that threatens humanity, its ecosystems, life as we know it, and even future generations, the Court seeks to put matters squarely on the table, pull the state to account, and even provide policy tools to respond to the emergency. 

This introduction opens the symposium on Advisory Opinion AO-32/25 on the Climate Emergency and Human Rights. It sets a program for sustained, diverse, and rigorous debate on the opinion’s implications, legal significance, and next steps. In this first phase, eight Latin American scholars examine core legal questions raised by AO-32/25. Their essays supply a baseline for further engagement and invite refinement, contestation, and alternative doctrinal or implementation proposals. 

In this contribution, I provide a concise roadmap to AO-32/25. I explain the request that triggered the advisory proceedings, the breadth of participation before the Court, and the implementation challenges that now require attention.

Governments Test the Law’s Limits

With the recent surge in the popularity of advisory opinions as a vehicle for legal transformation, the governments of Colombia and Chile requested clarification of states’ obligations to combat the climate crisis, the procedural rights at stake, and the treatment of specific vulnerable groups, namely children, environmental defenders, women, Indigenous peoples, and Afro-descendant and peasant communities. This is not the first use of advisory opinions to address structural issues where competing interests block the progressive development of rights in the face of deep polarization. Nor is it the first to deal with environmental protection. AO-32/25 is the second, following Advisory Opinion 23/17, and with that experience, the Court reflected more carefully on how to open new doors. 

That Chile and Colombia, both confronting internal disputes over scarce natural resources and acting as regional leaders in industrial development, initiated the request underscores the urgency and stakes of the climate crisis. Only member states and the Organization of American States may seek an advisory opinion. This signals a governmental turn to clarify where the law can and should go. The Advisory Opinion is a legal instrument with direct policy consequences. It equips the executive with a clearer map of existing obligations, identifies those most affected, and offers guidance that can inform future legislation and judicial decisionmaking. In short, governments asked, and the law answered in a way that will shape policy.

The request presented twenty questions. The Court consolidated them into three. First, it addresses the scope and content of state obligations to respect, protect, and fulfill substantive rights in the climate emergency. Second, it examines parallel obligations regarding procedural rights. Third, it considers duties toward specific vulnerable groups, including children, environmental defenders, women, Indigenous peoples, and Afro-descendant and peasant communities.

Hundreds of Voices, One Climate Mandate

The most striking feature was the lead-up to the opinion and the active listening shown by the judges of the Inter-American Court.  Once the request was admitted, the Court invited states, civil society, victims, companies, and scientific experts to participate.

More than six hundred voices came together to shape what became the most participatory process in the history of the Inter-American Court. Communities, governments, activists, scholars, and even a private company converged to debate how law should respond to a changing planet. The written stage alone drew 263 briefs from across the hemisphere, and the Court then took its hearings to the field, gathering testimony in Bridgetown, Brasilia, and Manaus—cities already feeling the weight of the climate crisis. Over 185 delegations filled those rooms with arguments, warnings, and proposals, turning a legal procedure into a continental conversation about the future of human rights.

What stood out most was the preparation and the active listening of the judges, a level of engagement rarely seen in international law. Participation gave AO-32/25 a force that went beyond symbolism, turning abstract rights into concrete obligations. Though formally a secondary source of law, the opinion draws on norms from every level and channels them toward the progressive development of rights capable of confronting the climate emergency. The submissions ranged from cutting-edge scientific studies to comparative legal analyses, from testimonies of victims to carefully crafted doctrinal arguments. Together, they supplied not only legal reasoning but data, faces, places, and lived experiences. This wealth of evidence allowed the judges to frame rights in terms that states can implement and made the resulting opinion hard to ignore. Even contributions that ventured beyond settled doctrine helped widen the debate and expand the Court’s legal imagination, offering conceptual tools and practical pathways that now press governments to act.

Implementation Must Follow

To close, I turn to the path that follows the advisory opinion. Moving beyond the familiar positivist critique that advisory opinions are not binding, the doctrine of control de convencionalidad calls on states to act. Political authorities are expected to design policies that align with the Court’s interpretations, legislatures to protect rights through new laws, and judges to apply the opinion as a direct source of law. With an instrument that squarely addresses state obligations, the next step is for governments to translate their guidance into reality, gradually but decisively.

The real test now lies outside the courtroom. The Court’s words are not a commercial contract that enforces itself. The Court calls for political will from state authorities, sustained social mobilization, and the patience of trial and error. The issuance of the advisory opinion does not mean that governments will abandon resource extraction within five years, that transportation and energy systems will suddenly turn green, or that rivers and forests will be automatically reimagined and protected. Nor does the opinion guarantee that future generations will occupy a new place in national priorities. The Court’s decision may even pass unnoticed by many and risk becoming little more than paper.

Yet the power to transform does not rest with the Court or the states alone. Civil society must carry the momentum forward. In Cuenca, Ecuador, peaceful protests brought together 100,000 residents of a city of 600,000 to reject metallic mining in vital water recharge zones, demonstrating the strength of local action. Across the Amazon, Indigenous peoples continue a singular mission, using traditional knowledge to understand fragile ecosystems and defend them against exploitation.  Moreover, we can expect the opinion to function as a toolkit that can be invoked in litigation before different forums. Lawyers and experts will use it to push administrations and companies either to advance or to avoid narrowing the rights it interprets.

These movements show that while the Court provides the legal framework, the future of the climate struggle will be written by those who organize, resist, and insist that the law is complied with and enforced. 

The Symposium and Beyond

Academia is the forum where the reach of the Advisory Opinion will be tested. Legal scholars can identify gaps, frame dilemmas, and map the doctrinal and enforcement opportunities it opens. This symposium advances that work.

To open, Eduardo Cavalcanti de Mello Filho argues that AO-32/25 recalibrates the legal effects of advisory opinions in international law. He contends that the Court extends the Opinion’s reach to all OAS member states and requires them to consider integrally its interpretation, positioning AO-32/25 as a privileged material source that should guide the creation and interpretation of human rights obligations. The payoff is practical. Domestic authorities and the Inter-American Commission cannot cherry-pick. They must engage the Opinion as a whole when applying climate-related rights.

From there, Ignacio Vásquez Torreblanca argues that AO-32/25 operationalizes intergenerational justice and elevates the right to a healthy climate as a legal bridge for future generations and nature. He traces how the Opinion deploys non-regression, progressivity, and equitable burden sharing, while bringing into view tensions between anthropocentrism and ecocentrism and the need for procedural avenues, including youth-led actions.

Turning to differentiation, Lucas Lima examines AO-32/25’s treatment of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities. He demonstrates that the Court utilizes the CBDR-RC to calibrate enhanced due diligence and cooperation, as well as to guide mitigation, adaptation, and climate finance. At the same time, he argues that the Opinion does not fully define how differentiation operates within human-rights obligations, leaving that question to future litigation and conventionality control.

On the accountability front, Laura Barón-Mendoza uses AO-32/25 to map criminal routes. Reading the Opinion alongside Rome Statute Article 21(3), she frames climate-related persecution as a crime against humanity, extends liability to corporate and other non-state actors through strengthened state duties to regulate, and develops doctrinal support for ecocide. The payoff is a prosecutorial and policy toolkit that translates AO-32/25’s human rights reasoning into charges and enforcement strategies for use before the ICC and domestic courts.

In a complementary register, María Paula Marroquín Ruiz shows how AO-32/25’s ecocentric turn can shape future argumentation on rights of nature. Drawing on Ecuador’s jurisprudence, she argues for ecosystem and animal standing, a robust precautionary principle, and the embedding of Indigenous knowledge, making rights of nature an operative frame for remedies and enforcement.

Rounding out the picture, Milagros Mutsios Ramsay examines AO-32/25’s safeguards for Indigenous Peoples, with attention to participation, knowledge, and land tenure. She argues that the Opinion requires states to justify how Indigenous input shapes decisions, extends FPIC to climate measures, and reads the right to science to include Indigenous knowledge. She also shows that the Court’s property analysis obliges states to guarantee land of comparable quality where climate displacement makes return impossible, thereby reframing adaptation and remedies within a rights-based framework.

Building on that foundation, Mariana Cruz Astudillo analyzes AO-32/25’s recognition of the right to a healthy environment as an autonomous right and the structuring of state obligations. In this light, she explains how due diligence, non-regression, and progressivity ground mitigation, ecosystem protection, and sustainable development, and she locates the institutional capacity and enforcement gaps that will test implementation.

We invite scholars and practitioners to submit short essays for consideration. Please send drafts that engage the advisory opinion’s reasoning, sources, or implementation pathways. More information on the submission guidelines can be found here.

So, without further ado, I declare this Symposium officially OPEN!

Photo attribution: Photo by Pao Dayag on Unsplash