Press Release: Recognition of Nature as a Subject of Rights by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights
Inter-American Court of Human Rights logo
Commemorating the First Anniversary of Advisory Opinion 32/25
July 28, 2026
Contact:
Hugo Echeverría, Attorney, hugo.echeverria@mail.mcgill.ca
Mari Margil, Executive Director, mmargil@centerforenvironmentalrights.org
A year ago, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (Court) issued Advisory Opinion – AO-32/25, recognizing nature as a subject of legal rights.
The Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights (CDER) commends the Court’s Advisory Opinion which emphasized the importance of protecting the rights of nature in order to address climate change and other environmental crises. The Advisory Opinion echoes key arguments that CDER submitted to the Court.
Advisory Opinion: AO-32/25
In its Advisory Opinion, the Court explained that recognizing nature as a subject of rights helps protect: “ecosystems, providing effective legal tools to confront the triple planetary crisis, and facilitating the prevention of existential damage before it becomes irreversible.”
The Court further stated that in the midst of overlapping environmental crises, the rights of nature “reflects a growing tendency at the international level aimed at strengthening the protection of ecological systems in the face of present and future threats…”
Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the Rights of Nature
The American Convention on Human Rights came into force in 1978, establishing the Court. It is an international treaty with parties largely countries in Latin America.
The impact of the Court's Advisory Opinions is significant in setting standards for the application and interpretation of human rights. In the case of Ecuador, to date the only country recognizing the rights of nature in its constitution, this Advisory Opinion contributes to strengthening its development and application of the constitutional rights of nature.
In 2017, the Court noted a tendency toward the recognition of the rights of nature in Advisory Opinion AO-23/17 (on the environment and human rights).
In 2023, Colombia and Chile asked the Court to address the impacts of climate change on people and nature.
As a human rights court, the Court could have responded solely from an environmental law perspective (based upon the right to a healthy environment). Instead, with AO-32/25, the Court extended its focus to include both the human right to a healthy environment and the rights of nature, reasoning that such approach is necessary in a polycrisis scenario, representing “a contemporary expression of the principle of the interdependence between human rights and the environment.”
The Court highlighted the effectiveness of the rights of nature in protecting the natural environment. This is important, as the rights of nature are indeed providing real protections, especially in Latin America with multiple rights of nature legal cases protecting forests, rivers, and mountains.
The Court also highlighted efforts made at the international level to advance the rights of nature, via the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, as well as the United Nations General Assembly.
Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights Input to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights
CDER actively participated in this case by submitting written input in 2023, and by appearing before the Court in a hearing held in 2024.
In our submission, we described how the human right to a healthy environment and the rights of nature are distinct rights.
Facing overlapping environmental crises, such as climate change, species extinction, and ecosystem collapse, a growing number of countries in the Americas – including Ecuador, Panama, and Bolivia – are protecting both the human right to a healthy environment and the rights of nature in law.
CDER’s submission provided a unique perspective to the Inter-American Court, emphasizing that the protection of the human right to a healthy environment requires that we move beyond traditional human-centric environmental laws, which have proven inadequate to address environmental crises, and of the need to protect the rights of nature.
CDER’s founders consulted on the drafting of Ecuador’s rights of nature constitutional provisions. Based upon the Ecuadorian model, we explained that these rights are complementary, and that addressing the climate emergency and human rights, will require protecting and guaranteeing both sets of rights.
The Court addressed this in the Advisory Opinion, writing that the recognition of the rights of nature:
“allows us to transcend inherited legal concepts that conceived Nature exclusively as an object of ownership or an exploitable resource. Recognition of Nature as a subject of rights also emphasizes its structural role in the vital balance of the conditions that make this planet inhabitable. This approach reinforces a paradigm focused on the protection of the ecological conditions that are essential for life…”
The CDER was one of very few organizations defending the rights of nature before the Court whose opinions are relevant in the whole Latin-American region.
Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights & the Rights of Nature
CDER's founders worked on the first rights of nature laws in the world - including Ecuador's rights of nature constitutional provisions. Ecuador enshrined the constitutional human right to a healthy environment in 1983, and the rights of the environment (nature) within the constitution in 2008.
The rights of nature is a movement that has established constitutional provisions (Ecuador) and national and local laws and court rulings across the globe, including in Latin America, North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. Tribal and First Nations have protected the rights of nature in their Indigenous legal frameworks as well.
Legal rights include the rights of nature to exist, thrive, evolve, regenerate, and be restored. Legal rights are the highest form of legal protection that exists in human written law.
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