The Role of Courts in Advancing the Right to a Healthy Environment: Lessons from Latin America
Event Description
Latin America has been at the forefront of judicialization of a right to a healthy environment. Courts in different countries have curbed burning and deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, as well as the expansion of wind farms in Mexico; they have ordered the clean-up of river basins in Argentina and ordered the protection of important ecosystems in Colombia. Some high courts have embraced ‘rights of nature’ and have fashioned innovative structural remedies, which have included the creation of new institutions. Nonetheless, there is a very mixed record on implementation of the judgments and a complex political economy around creating public policies that advance the effective enjoyment of rights to a healthy environment in a region wracked by economic inequality and the outsized power of extractive and other commercial interests. Justices from Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil, discussed the evolution of this jurisprudence in their respective countries, and a panel discussion followed that examined challenges as well as successes. This event was part of the Series of Climate Justice Events at Harvard Law School. Members of the Harvard community and members of the public are warmly invited to all sessions of the HLS Climate Justice series.
Panelists
- Moderator: Alicia Ely Yamin, Lecturer on Law; Senior Fellow on Global Health and Rights at the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics at Harvard Law School
- Welcoming remarks: Sol Carbonell, Interim Executive Director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, Harvard University
- Alfredo Gutiérrez Ortiz Mena, Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation, México
- Antonio Herman Benjamin, Justice of the National High Court of Brazil
- Ricardo Lorenzetti, Judge of the Supreme Court of Justice of Argentina
This event is co-sponsored by the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School, the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School, and the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies.