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The premises animating the workshop “Developments on Human Rights and the Environment in the Global South”
The current climate emergency is one of the most pressing issues of our time, alongside biodiversity loss and environmental degradation. Its detrimental effects for the environment and human beings threaten sustainable life on our planet. One salient feature of this crisis is that the impacts of climate change are not equally distributed among rich and poor nations. As it stands, many parts of the Global South are at a higher risk of suffering the negative consequences of anthropogenic climate change. In that sense, climate change has heightened the disparity between former colonial powers and former colonies. Climate change itself is certainly an effect of colonisation, which brought forward exploitation and extractivism of colonised peoples and territories in the periphery. Their struggle for socio-environmental justice thus explains the new developments in relation to human rights and environmental protection emerging in the Global South. While most of these innovations —e.g. the right to a healthy environment or rights of nature— have emerged on a domestic level, their influence in international environmental law and regional human rights law is slowly but surely taking hold.
For instance, in its Advisory Opinion OC-32/25 on Climate Emergency and Human Rights, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) incorporated several elements that first emerged in the environmental constitutionalism of some of its Member States. Many of these jurisdictions have been influenced by the Andean philosophy of buen vivir or by biocultural rights, which has led to the recognition of rights of nature. From a more conservative standpoint, the Advisory Opinion on the Obligations of States in Relation to Climate Change by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) recently recognised a principle of interdependence between human rights and the environment as a precondition for the enjoyment of the former. This advisory opinion, issued just a few months after the one from the San José Court, was the result of a process driven primarily by youth from Kiribati and other Pacific Island territories. These are areas particularly vulnerable to rising sea levels caused by climate change. The forthcoming advisory opinion on the same topic, to be issued by the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, will likely also offer a Global South perspective of state human rights obligations concerning climate change mitigation and adaptation.
The ‘Global South’, as a term, is not a perfect one. It emerged as an alternative to other concepts that carried negative connotations –e.g. Third World or Developing World. However, the term has now evolved to designate low and middle-income countries and emerging powers. At any rate, it is a term that although contested, evokes several common characteristics, such as internal diversity, evolving roles, and shifting alliances. It also signifies that its components remain anchored in global justice and systemic transformation struggles that endow the Global South its political significance. This complex heterogeneity of narratives, socio-political vindications, economic vulnerabilities, and communities of practice has seen the Global South gain a particular space within the rights-based climate litigation movement. This space has been hardly fought for by climate litigators in the Global South, including Indigenous Peoples’ by bridging the disproportionate effects of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and environmental justice using the powerful discourse of international and regional human rights frameworks. Dissecting and understanding the way such entitlements have been used to uphold human dignity, environmental protection, self-determination, and the innovative legal arguments that use has entailed, was the key driver for organising the “Developments on Human Rights and the Environment in the Global South” workshop.
Global South contributions to the understanding of the interdependence between human rights and the environment act as a counter-narrative to the dominant European/Western perspectives in the development of international law. Since colonial times, a Eurocentric bias has persisted, assuming that all valid thought must originate from Europe or the West, while silencing or ignoring voices from the periphery. While colonialism was formally defeated, Western thought domination over all other alternatives has prevailed to date. However, strictly focusing on Western perspectives creates a parochial effect that precludes the inclusion of new ideas that could further the development of international law. Yet it is precisely in the periphery where ideas about socio-environmental justice that could shape the role of human rights in curbing the climate crisis are rapidly taking hold. That is why looking at the latest developments that have emerged in the Global South regarding such interdependence is nothing short of important.
As members of the Working Group on Climate Crisis and Human Rights of the Netherlands Network for Human Rights Research (NNHRR), and legal researchers with a deep interest in these subjects, we organised a Workshop on Developments on Human Rights and the Environment in the Global South. The event took place on 4 December 2025 at Leiden University College. The workshop’s main objective was to bring together scholars and practitioners to discuss key legal developments at the intersection of human rights and the environment that have emerged from the Global South. With a focus on the recent advisory opinions on climate change and human rights, the recognition of the right to a healthy environment, and the role of regional and domestic contexts in shaping these advancements, the workshop featured one keynote lecture and three panels.
The workshop in detail
Prof Yvonne Donders (UvA) opened the workshop with her keynote lecture on the contributions of the UN Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) to the development of monitoring norms related to climate change. She evoked General Comment 36 on the right to life, where the UNHRC held that environmental degradation, climate change and unsustainable development constitute a serious threat to the livelihood of present and future generations. Building upon this finding, Prof Donders further stressed that the Committee has outlined several environmental obligations deriving from the ICCPR. Such obligations include the duty to conduct environmental impact assessments, and to take adequate steps to ensure sustainable use of natural resources. The UNHRC has also incorporated Global South and Indigenous Peoples’ perspectives, mostly through individual complaint procedures, in cases such as Teitiota v New Zealand (2019), Billy v Australia (2022), and Campo Agua’ẽ Indigenous Community v Paraguay (2022).
The workshop continued with its first panel discussion on human rights, Indigenous Peoples, and the environment. We had the fortune to host Dr Elena Kavanagh (University College Cork), Ms Olga Ievleva (University of Groningen), and Mr Medes Mailaholo (University of Groningen). Several topics were discussed within an open conversation format, including the adequacy of the term Global South for Indigenous Peoples, the importance of Arctic Indigenous Peoples within the emergence of rights-based environmental protection regimes, the contributions of Indigenous cosmologies to global debates on environmental protection, and the intersection between self-determination and environmental issues.
After the lunch break, it was time for a second panel discussion on regional and domestic developments in Human Rights and the environment in the Global South. This panel consisted of three thought-provoking presentations by Dr Andrés Martínez Moscoso (San Francisco University, Quito), Dr Lisa Mardikian (Brunel University London), and Ms Junecynthia Okelo (Pan-African Lawyers’ Union). Dr Martínez addressed the latest developments regarding river rights in Ecuador, referring to recent domestic case law on rights of nature. Second, Dr Mardikian presented on the right to a healthy environment in the IACtHR’s Advisory Opinion OC-32/25. Finally, Ms Okelo discussed the role that the right to a healthy environment would play within the ongoing advisory opinion proceedings on climate change and human rights before the African Court of Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACtHPR).
The last panel of the workshop was called ‘What future for Human Rights and the environment within the Regional Human Rights System?’ The panel comprised thoughtful presentations by Prof Jasper Krommendijk (Radboud University), Dr Otto Spijkers (Leiden University College), and Dr Marie Fall (independent researcher). A lively conversation ensued about the ripple effects of the two advisory opinions from the IACtHR and the ICJ in regional and domestic jurisdictions, and about the possible outcomes at the ACtHPR, which could determine the future directions the African system could take regarding climate litigation. A learned comparison was also drawn between the ICJ and the regional courts’ case law in regards to climate change. Finally, part of the discussion was dedicated to the ongoing Bonaire litigation and the human rights obligations of the Dutch State regarding the deleterious effects of climate change in respect of its overseas territories. This turned out to be rather timely given the significance of the decision issued by The Hague District Court on 28 January 2026.
Most of these invaluable inputs are condensed in the entries comprising this blog series.
Final remarks
It is without a doubt that the discussions on the interdependence between human rights and the environment led by the workshop experts will continue to resonate both in academia and in the public discourse. This blog series focusing on Global South developments in that area serves as a departure point to a larger discussion about how socio-environmental justice demands from the Global South can be integrated further within international and regional human rights frameworks in the current convoluted context. The entry contributions by workshop experts Drs Lisa Mardikian, Otto Spijkers, Marie Fall and Elena Kavanagh we have the honour to present here seek to crystallise their insights and understandings of how such an integration can be achieved. These experts have indeed produced a short but meaningful vision of the implications of these Global South-led legal developments; one that has truly considered the feedback from workshop participants and can also foster novel ways to research human rights and the climate crisis as a community of practice.
Bios
Patricio Trincado Vera is a PhD Researcher at University of Groningen.
Julian Suarez is a PhD Researcher at University College Cork.
Both authors are PhD students in Law and founding members of the Climate Change and Global South Sub-Group within the Human Rights and the Climate Crisis Working Group of the Netherlands Network for Human Rights Research (NNHRR).