Published on April 30, 2026
By Angélica Cuevas, International Network for Economic, Social & Cultural Rights ESCR-Net and Luisa Gómez Betancur, Senior Attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL).
Insights from the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues: Indigenous leaders, environmental defenders, and climate litigation experts are examining how to turn international court opinions into tools for territorial defense and political advocacy.
The 2025 advisory opinions on climate change, issued by the International Court of Justice and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, clarify States’ obligations in the face of the climate crisis and bring into sharp focus a critical challenge for Indigenous Peoples: how to transform these legal advances into concrete tools for defending their territories.
This discussion is unfolding this week at the 25th United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII), with participation from ESCR-Net members, including CIEL.
These advisory opinions mark a turning point in international law. For Indigenous Peoples, whose lands and ways of life are on the frontlines of the climate crisis, they strengthen legal pathways to demand accountability from States and to challenge decisions that threaten their territories. According to the United Nations, Indigenous Peoples represent less than 6 percent of the global population but protect nearly 80 percent of the planet’s biodiversity, underscoring what is at stake.
For example, research on climate harm led by Endorois communities in Kenya documented the loss of more than 3,000 acres of land and the displacement of hundreds of families. The challenge is clear. The advisory opinions must become operational on the ground, meaning they need to be transformed into concrete strategies within contexts shaped by extractivism and socio-environmental conflict.
Luisa Castañeda-Quintana, Executive Director of Land is Life, stated during one of the Forum’s opening sessions:
“These advisory opinions are not symbolic; they are instruments of power. They must be taken up and brought into the spaces where decisions about Indigenous Peoples’ futures are made.” In other words, the value of these decisions lies not only in their existence but in their strategic use.
For Patricia Gualinga, Kichwa leader from Sarayaku, Ecuador, the recent decisions by the Inter-American Court do not introduce new principles. Rather, they reinforce long-standing demands by Indigenous Peoples: recognition of their disproportionate exposure to the climate crisis, the legitimacy of their knowledge systems, and States’ obligation to respect free, prior, and informed consent.
“The Inter-American Court…recognizes that Indigenous Peoples are among the most affected and that our knowledge is a legitimate part of the climate response. No decisions can be made about our territories without our consent,” Gualinga said during the UNPFII session.
From this perspective, responses to the climate crisis must be grounded in territories and in Indigenous ways of life, governance, and relationships with nature.
“Our worldview, embodied in Kawsak Sacha (Living Forest), is our real contribution to addressing the climate crisis. We do not want imposed projects. We demand recognition of our vision, our systems of coexistence with nature, our life plans, our self-determination, and our own governance,”
said Gualinga, emphasizing that these decisions reinforce what communities have asserted for decades.
“The climate crisis is not only an environmental issue. It is a crisis of rights, survival, and territory.”
However, she also warned of a persistent structural gap between legal recognition and implementation. What is written in legal texts continues to diverge from realities on the ground.
“States are not listening, and our forest remains under threat,”
she said.
Three Pathways from Legal Recognition to Action
From a strategic litigation perspective, it will be key to translate the advisory opinions into thematic and operational lines of action that Indigenous nations can integrate into their rights-claiming strategies.
The challenge is not only to analyze these opinions, but also to implement them. There are three key entry points:
1. Recognize Indigenous Knowledge as the Best Available Science
Indigenous knowledge must be recognized as legal evidence on par with Western scientific knowledge. Local and Indigenous knowledge must be understood as the best available science in climate litigation and governance. This requires, for example, its effective integration into tools such as environmental impact assessments, enabling more rigorous scrutiny of extractive projects and state decisions.
2. Protect the Rights of Nature Across Jurisdictions
The advisory opinion of the Inter-American Court has wide legal reach, as it applies to more than thirty members of the Organization of American States, including the United States, significantly expanding its legal reach.In this context, the rights of nature, as recognized by the Court, are no longer confined to specific constitutional frameworks. Instead, they become enforceable arguments across the Inter-American system, opening new pathways for advocacy in jurisdictions where such standards did not previously exist.
3. Advance the Right to Self-Determination
The advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice warns that sea level rise is driving forced displacement, as well as undermining States’ territorial integrity and sovereignty over their natural resources — with direct implications for how they exercise their right to self-determination.
This assessment creates a strategic entry point for climate litigation. The right to self-determination is not a new right; it is enshrined in multiple treaties ratified by multiple States around the world. The challenge lies in making it operational within courts and legal processes in the context of the climate crisis, as well as applying it to the defense of territory and political autonomy of Indigenous Peoples.
A Conversation that Requires Broader Engagement
Litigation alone is not enough. It is one part of a broader set of strategies and tactics for climate justice and it must be accompanied by strong advocacy campaigns that mobilize direct support for Indigenous-led movements.
Organizations such as CIEL and Land is Life are working to ensure that more Indigenous Peoples can access and use these advisory opinions in their documentation, advocacy, and rights claiming strategies.
The challenge is not only legal — it is political, too. It requires ensuring that civil society organizations and social movements transform international legal standards into concrete tools that can be used to demand accountability and halt decisions that continue to endanger Indigenous territories.