In July 2025, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) issued Advisory Opinion OC-32/25 on the climate emergency, one of the most comprehensive judicial pronouncements on climate change to date.
The Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. As part of our retrospective and the Salata Institute’s Climate Week, journey through our past and present climate justice work. Introduction Events The Petrie-Flom Center hosts lunchtime discussions, book talks, conferences, and webinars throughout the year,…
Recently three key areas have attracted special EU attention: sustainability, biodiversity, and food supply and security.
The range of adverse mental health effects resulting from climate change include triggering or exacerbating anxiety, depression, grief, and suicide. Natural phenomena from heatwaves and droughts to floods and fires that are fueled by climate change cause trauma, distress, and other mental health conditions. So can chronic, slow-onset effects of global warming, such as water and food insecurity, community breakdown, and conflict. Members of marginalized groups, especially Indigenous peoples, feel these effects in unique and especially acute…
For the past week, I have watched my beloved city of Los Angeles become engulfed in flames. My heart aches knowing that the places I once loved—the Will Rogers beach house, the Palisades lookout, and a drive up the Pacific Coast Highway—will never be the same.
By Anna Aguilar and Sidney Lee In 1971, Congress tasked the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) with establishing procedures to “eliminate as far as practicable” the dangers of lead poisoning. Yet, HUD has repeatedly fallen short of accomplishing this. More than 50 years later, for children in federally assisted housing in the…
Conclusion of the Digital Symposium Climate Change and Health
By Cristina Rosero-Arteaga The climate emergency in Latin America is intensifying a long-standing yet underrecognized health crisis: reproductive harm due to agrochemical exposure, particularly for rural women. As shifting climate patterns threaten to exacerbate these harms, it is crucial to bring these issues into the focus of climate action. The region’s human rights framework —…
Women queue to fill their buckets, Bolangir, Odisha, India 18.1.2022. ©Nairita Roy Chaudhuri By Nairita Roy Chaudhuri Most small farmers in rural India directly depend on rainwater…
Photo credit: @wambuigichobi | SMA A Masai woman raises her fist as other women leaders look on at COP 27 in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt during one of the debriefs by the Women and Gender Constituency. by Faith Lumonya, Esther Wambui, and Eunice Musiime As global temperatures rise and the frequency of extreme weather events…
