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 inequalities[3](https://ww…
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) decisions[5](#ref-CR5 “United Nations. Resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 29 March 2023. Request for an advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice on the obligations of States in respect of climate change (A/77/L.58) (United Nations, 2023); https://docs.un.org/en/A/RES/77/276
“),[6](#ref-CR6 “United Nations. Resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 28 July 2022. The human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment (A/RES/76/300) (United Nations, 2022); https://docs.un.org/en/A/RES/76/300
“),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 law[5](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-025-01700-y#ref-CR5 “United Nations. Resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 29 March 2023. Request for an advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice on the obligations of States in respect of climate change (A/77/L.58) (United Nations, 2023); https://docs.un.org/en/A/RES/77/276
“). 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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Author information
Authors and Affiliations
CRETUS-EqualSea Lab, University of Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de Compostela, Spain
Sebastian Villasante 1.
Marine and Antarctic Research Centre for Sustainability and Innovation, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa
Lynne Shannon 1.
Carroll School of Management, Boston College, Philadelphia, PA, USA
Sandra Waddock 1.
Instituto de Investigaciones en Recursos Naturales, Agroecología y Desarrollo Rural, Universidad Nacional de Río Negro, San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina
Lucas A. Garibaldi 1.
Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, Instituto de Investigaciones en Recursos Naturales, Agroecología y Desarrollo Rural, Río Negro, Argentina
Lucas A. Garibaldi 1.
Global Science, WWF, Washington, DC, USA
Nathan J. Bennett 1.
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 1.
Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Nathan J. Bennett 1.
Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Joyeeta Gupta 1.
IHE-Delft Institute for Water Education, Delft, Netherlands
Joyeeta Gupta 1.
CORDIO East Africa, Mombasa, Kenya
David Obura 1.
Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden
Albert V. Norström 1.
Future Earth Secretariat, Stockholm, Sweden
Albert V. Norström 1.
Department of Sociology and Human Geography, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
Karen O’Brien 1.
Ikerbasque, Basque Science Foundation, Bilbao, Spain
Unai Pascual 1.
Basque Centre for Climate Change, Bilbao, Spain
Unai Pascual 1.
Keough School of Global Affairs, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, USA
Arun Agrawal
Authors
- Sebastian Villasante
- Lynne Shannon
- Sandra Waddock
- Lucas A. Garibaldi
- Nathan J. Bennett
- Joyeeta Gupta
- David Obura
- Albert V. Norström
- Karen O’Brien
- Unai Pascual
- Arun Agrawal
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 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-025-01700-y
Published: 10 November 2025
Version of record: 10 November 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-025-01700-y