Collective Work

This advocacy briefing is grounded in the mutual exchange among ESCR-Net members, particularly facilitated through the Working Group on Environment and ESCR. Drawing on years of analysis focused on the realities of climate injustices and the intricate relationship between loss and damage and...

The urgency of the climate crisis is reaching courts all around the world, including international tribunals, and ESCR-Net members are deeply engaged.

Climate litigation is pending or soon expected in all three regional human rights systems, in addition to the International Court of...

On 19 December 2022, the United Nations Biodiversity Conference, held in Montreal, ended with the adoption of the “Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework” (GBF), a landmark agreement on measures considered critical to address the dangerous loss of biodiversity and restore natural ecosystems.

Amidst a triple planetary crisis (climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss) with existential stakes and devastating impacts for the human rights of billions of people across regions, the universal recognition in 2022 of the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment is...

This year alone we have seen extreme weather events and slow-onset processes resulting in catastrophic loss and damage (impacts of climate change that cannot be avoided through adaptation and mitigation activities), leading to serious human rights harm all across the world affecting millions of people, for which historical and present responsibility lies with wealthy, highly industrialized countries and powerful corporate actors. Loss and damage is a human rights crisis (more on our analysis here), and States, particularly wealthy and highly industrialized nations, have clear legal obligations to urgently and meaningfully address loss and damage, both in terms of the symptoms and the root causes. Many ESCR-Net members confront climate impacts on the frontlines and forcefully resist the structural drivers thereof. Loss and damage has thus been taken up as a collective ESCR-Net priority for the past three years.

A collective of ESCR-Net members and allied organizations filed an amicus curiae brief on international human rights, environmental, and comparative law standards to the Inter-American Court...

On September 27, 2022, ESCR-Net’s Environment and ESCR Networkwide Project and Strategic Litigation Working Group co- hosted an online discussion on climate and human rights litigation: Ensuring access to international justice for climate-related human rights violations. Members from...

There is no denying that the historical and present responsibility for the climate crisis lies primarily with wealthy, highly industrialized countries and powerful corporate actors. Despite contributing the least to the climate crisis, frontline communities in the Global South are paying the price with the destruction of their territories and the erasure of their cultural heritage.

Ahead of COP 27, which will be held in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt and COP 15 which will be held in Montreal, Canada; ESCR-Net in partnership with Natural Justice, the African...

Collectives of ESCR-Net members have filed third-party interventions in a pair of groundbreaking climate change-related human rights cases now pending before the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights. The two cases—Duarte Agostinho v. Portugal and 32 Other States, and ...

On 23 June 2022, ESCR-Net members sent a collective submission to the United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on human rights and climate change, Mr. Ian Fry, in response to a call for input  on “Promotion and protection of human rights in the context of mitigation, adaptation, and financial actions to address climate change, with particular emphasis on loss and damage,” to inform his upcoming report to be presented at the 77th session of the UN General Assembly. The joint submission focused especially on loss and damage. [Read the full submission here].