This one-day conference will convene judges, litigators, and scholars from Africa, Europe, and Latin America for a comparative examination of the evolving relationship between climate change, the right to health, and judicial enforcement.

Agenda

9–9:30 a.m.

Welcome & Introductions

9:30–11 a.m. | Panel 1

International Courts: Emerging Standards on the Evolving Climate-Health Nexus

Recent advisory opinions have placed climate-related health harms at the forefront of international adjudication, prompting courts and tribunals to articulate legal standards concerning prevention, due diligence, vulnerability, reparations, and intergenerational justice. While these decisions emerge from distinct legal regimes, they also reveal an evolving dialogue on how international law should respond to the human consequences of climate change. This panel explores where these emerging approaches converge, where they diverge, and how they may shape the future development of climate-health jurisprudence across international and regional courts.

Judge María Teresa Infante Caffi, International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea 

Honorable Lady Justice Suzanne Mengue, Representative of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights

Judge Darian Pavli, European Court of Human Rights 

Judge Patricia Pérez Goldberg, Inter-American Court of Human Rights

Judge Leonardo Nemer Caldeira Brant, International Court of Justice, TBC

Moderator: Gerald Neuman, J. Sinclair Armstrong Professor of International, Foreign, and Comparative Law and Director of the Human Rights Program, Harvard Law School

11–11:15 a.m.

Break

11:15 a.m.–12:15 p.m. | Panel 2

Advocates’ and Litigators’ Panel:  Strategies, Evidence, and the Expanding Contours of the Climate-Health Docket

As climate-health litigation expands across jurisdictions, advocacy groups and litigators are redefining how climate-related health harms are translated into legal claims, evidentiary records, and judicial remedies. This panel explores the strategic choices that shape when advocates decide to bring climate-health cases—from framing rights and selecting plaintiffs to building scientific evidence, addressing causation, and designing remedies capable of producing meaningful protection. It will also address when advocacy strategies beyond the courts is necessary or more strategic. Drawing on experiences from domestic, regional, and international climate-related advocacy, the discussion examines both the opportunities and the limits of litigation as a tool for advancing climate justice.

Rebecca Brown, President and CEO, Center for International Environmental Law

Tyler Giannini, Clinical Professor of Law, Harvard Law School

Catalina Martínez Coral, Senior Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean, Center for Reproductive Rights

Moderator: Aminta Ossom, Lecturer in Law and Senior Clinical Instructor, Harvard Law School

12:15–1:15 p.m.

Lunch

1:15–2:45 p.m. | Panel 3

Academic Panel: Normative Frameworks, Interdisciplinary Evidence, and the Future Architecture of Climate-Health Adjudication

This panel examines how emerging scholarship is reshaping the conceptual foundations of climate-health adjudication. Moving beyond doctrinal analysis, it explores norm convergence and divergences, as well as evidentiary challenges, and theoretical innovations that can better capture the complexity of climate-related health harms, differentiated vulnerability, and ecological interdependence. Bringing together perspectives from international and comparative law, disability rights, environmental justice, public health, and climate governance, the discussion considers how academic research can and should inform the next generation of climate jurisprudence while also identifying the limits of adjudication and the complementary roles of other actors and institutions.

Samvel Varvastian, Lecturer in Law, Cardiff University

Michael Stein, Director and Professor, Harvard Law School Project on Disability

Jackie Dugard, Senior Lecturer in the Discipline of Human Rights in Political Science, Columbia University

Benjamin Franta, Associate Professor of Climate Litigation, University of Oxford Sustainable Law Programme

Moderator: Thalia Viveros-Uehara, HGHI-Salata Burke Climate and Health Fellow; Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law; Visiting Scholar, Global Health and Rights Project, Petrie-Flom Center, Harvard law School

2:45–3 p.m.

Break

3–4:30 p.m. | panel 4

Domestic Courts’ Panel: Judicial Reasoning, Remedies, and Institutional Legitimacy on Health in a Warming World

Climate-health disputes increasingly reach constitutional and apex courts through challenges to public authorities’ responses to mitigation, adaptation, environmental regulation, and public health protection. These cases require courts to reconcile constitutional rights, scientific uncertainty, and long-term climate risks while preserving democratic legitimacy and institutional balance. This panel explores how domestic courts are shaping the constitutional architecture of climate governance through standards of review, evidentiary approaches, remedies, and dialogue with international and regional jurisprudence.

Justice Natalia Ángel Cabo, President and CEO, Constitutional Court of Colombia 

Mr. Alfredo Gutiérrez Ortiz Mena, former Justice, Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation

Justice Isaac Lenaola, Supreme Court of Kenya 

Dr. Andreas L. Paulus, Professor of Public and International Law, Georg-August University of Göttingen; former Justice, Federal Constitutional Court of Germany

Moderator: Alicia Yamin, Lecturer on Law; Senior Fellow, Director of the Global Health and Rights Project, Petrie-Flom Center, Harvard Law School

4:30–4:40

Closing Remarks

Hotel

There is a special room rate reserved for this event at the Harvard Square Hotel. Click here to access the rate.

This event is organized by the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School, and is co-sponsored by the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability at Harvard University, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University, the Walter de Gruyter Foundation, the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School, the FXB Center for Health & Human Rights at Harvard University, the Harvard Global Health Institute, and the Emmet Environmental Law Center at Harvard Law School.