A Health-Centric Intersectional Approach to Climate Litigation at the European Court of Human Rights

Abstract

Climate change affects everyone’s health. At the same time, because of specific risk factors, some groups have a greater chance of becoming sick as a result of climate change than others. Evaluating these inequitable impacts through a health-centric intersectional approach—which considers overlapping factors like gender, age, residence, and prior health status—reveals significant health risks often overlooked in current human rights based cases. While the climate change litigation movement is thriving, evidence-based intersectional health risks remain surprisingly underexposed. This Article argues that a health-centric intersectional approach to climate change cases can enhance accountability for the impacts of climate change. We demonstrate the advantages of this approach in relation to two climate change cases recently decided by the European Court of Human Rights: Verein KlimaSeniorinnen v. Switzerland and Duarte Agostinho v. Portugal and 32 other States. We further show that a health-centric intersectional approach could avoid certain procedural and substantive pitfalls while responding more readily to climate-related health inequity.