by Maria Antonia Tigre,
The Escazú Agreement has brought a myriad of environmental rights and duties to Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), including the recognition of a right to a healthy environment and rights of environmental defenders. As a new agreement, the task of implementing the Escazú Agreement still lies ahead. Significantly, a non-judicial, non-punitive, consultative and transparent Committee to support Implementation and Compliance was established as a subsidiary body of the Conference of the Parties to promote implementation. Concomitantly, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights recognised an autonomous right to a healthy environment, establishing it as directly justiciable within the Inter-American System of Human Rights (IASHR). This chapter draws on comparative law to understand the non-compliance and judicial mechanisms available under the IASHR and Escazú, with an especial focus on the right to a healthy environment. Given the broad reach of the regional recognition available in LAC, what are the best mechanisms to use the right to prevent environmental harm? And how does this broad endeavour relate to the need to ensure that parties comply with the Escazú Agreement
Read the article The Right to a Healthy Environment in Latin America and the Caribbean: Compliance through the Inter-American System and the Escazú Agreement, in Columbia Law School's Scholarship Archive repository here.