Judicial Dialogues on Health and Climate Change: Emerging Standards, Comparative Trajectories, and Future Directions
Date and Time
Location
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.
Please join us for the full day or for what your schedule permits.
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.
Agenda
I. Glenn Cohen, James A. Attwood and Leslie Williams Professor of Law and Deputy Dean, Harvard Law School; Faculty Director, Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology & Bioethics, Harvard Law School
Gerald L. Neuman, J. Sinclair Armstrong Professor of International, Foreign, and Comparative Law; Director of the Human Rights Program, Harvard Law School
Alicia Ely Yamin, Lecturer on Law; Senior Fellow, Director of the Global Health and Rights Project, Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology & Bioethics, Harvard Law School
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 Leonardo Nemer Caldeira Brant, International Court of Justice
Judge María Teresa Infante Caffi, International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea
Honorable Lady Justice Suzanne Mengue, Judge, 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
Moderator: Gerald L. Neuman, J. Sinclair Armstrong Professor of International, Foreign, and Comparative Law; Director of the Human Rights Program, Harvard Law School
Domestic Courts: 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, Vice President, Constitutional Court of Colombia
Mr. Alfredo Gutiérrez Ortiz Mena, former Justice, Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation
Justice Isaac Lenaola, Judge of the Supreme Court of Kenya; President of the Residual Special Court for Sierra Leone
Dr. Andreas L. Paulus, Professor of Public and International Law, Georg-August University of Göttingen; former Justice, Federal Constitutional Court of Germany
Moderator: Alicia Ely Yamin, Lecturer on Law; Senior Fellow, Director of the Global Health and Rights Project, Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology & Bioethics, Harvard Law School
12:15-1:00 P.M. | Slides from COMMUNITY HATS Project, Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability, Harvard University
Community HATS is a worker-led research collaboration among members of the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) in India and researchers at Harvard and CEPT University. Using environmental sensors, wearables, and mobile data collection alongside women’s own accounts, the study tracks how heat affects the health, productivity, and income of informal workers in India.
Community HATS is as much about community knowledge as scientific measurement. Data from this project are regularly reviewed with informal workers throughout India- both participants and non-participants alike- through individualized reports, social-media campaigns, and in-person workshops. Together, the photography, and data document harms at a scale and specificity that climate-health law and policy must now confront.
1:15-1:45 P.M. | Short Film and Open Discussion with Robert Meade
The short film, One Hot Day, follows three women in occupations common across India’s informal economy: farming, vegetable vending, and home-based garment stitching. Heat disrupts their productivity during the day, affecting assets and income streams, and when they come home expecting a few hours of rest, heat does not afford even that respite. The strategies women devise to cope burden them with yet more work that is unpaid and unrecognized.
Robert Meade, COMMUNITY HATS, Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability, Harvard University; Research Scientist, Harvard Medical School
Scholarship and Research: 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.
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
Michael Stein, Director and Professor, Harvard Law School Project on Disability
Samvel Varvastian, Senior Lecturer in Law, School of Law and Politics, Cardiff University
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
Advocates and Litigators: 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 are 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
Kristen Casper, General Counsel, Greenpeace International
Tyler Giannini, Clinical Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
Catalina Martínez Coral, Vice President for Latin America and the Caribbean, Center for Reproductive Rights
Moderator: Aminta Ossom, Lecturer in Law and Senior Clinical Instructor, Harvard Law School
Vanessa Kerry, MD MSc., WHO Director General’s Special Envoy for Health Resilience; Director, Global and Climate Health Policy, Department of Environmental Health, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; Associate Professor, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; Chief Executive Officer, Seed Global Health
Alicia Ely Yamin, Lecturer on Law; Senior Fellow, Director of the Global Health and Rights Project, Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology & Bioethics, Harvard Law School