Reconciling the Right to Life and the Right to a Healthy Environment in the Caribbean’s Climate Crisis

The Caribbean’s Climate Crisis 

Commonwealth Caribbean Countries account for less than 1% of all global greenhouse gases.1 Despite this, climate change is projected to significantly and permanently impact the Commonwealth Caribbean. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), reports that sea levels in the Caribbean are expected to rise by up to 1.1 meters by 2100.2 This would inevitably devastate the tourism industry and result in Caribbean islands losing on average 5% of their coastline3 and hundreds of billions of dollars in coastal infrastructure.4 Climate change is also projected to impact the region's agriculture. Changes in precipitation patterns could cause droughts or flooding, impacting crop yields and livestock production. Agricultural production in the Caribbean is projected to decline by up to 17% by 2050.5

Apart from these environmental impacts, climate change is also projected to have severe socio- economic impacts in the Commonwealth Caribbean. According to the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility, the region is projected to experience losses of up to $10.7 billion USD annually by 2025 due to climate change.6 Further, rising water levels are expected to all but collapse the regional tourism industry which accounts for 14.8% of regional GDP and 12.9% of regional employment.7

Climate litigation, in particular rights-based climate litigation, has emerged as a powerful tool for holding governments and corporations accountable for their role in contributing to climate change. For example, in the Netherlands, the Urgenda Foundation, successfully argued that the Dutch Government’s GHG emission reduction policies were in violation of its obligations underthe European Convention of Human Rights. Following, this decision several sweeping changes were made to Dutch climate policy, with the incoming coalition government reserving 35 Billion-Euros for climate related measures.8 Further, Climate rights litigations such the Torres Strait Islanders case have been instrumental in fleshing out climate rights which are an intrinsic element of concepts such as “climate justice” and “loss and damage.”9

In contrast to global uptick in climate litigation, the Commonwealth Caribbean has been slow to litigate.  In fact, as of 31 May 2021, 1,841 cases of climate change litigation from around the world have been recorded. Of these, 1,387 were filed before courts in the United States, while the remaining 454 were filed in 39 other countries and 13 international or regional courts and tribunals (including the courts of the European Union). Notably there was only one case lodged in the Commonwealth Caribbean.10 

This is particularly concerning, as already the benefits of rights-based environment-based claims are being identified. In particular: 

• Rights based climate judgments reinforce the state’s duty to prevent human rights violations associated with a lack of adequate legislation and/or a lack of enforcement of existing laws and to refrain from authorizing activities that negatively affect the enjoyment of human rights

  
  

• Courts have also used a state’s duty to prevent human rights violations associated with a lack of adequate legislation or a lack of enforcement of existing laws including climate legislation.11

  
  

The region’s slow uptake of climate litigation cannot be disentangled from the region’s uniformed history of chattel slavery and plantation capitalism that engineered extractive, tourism-dependent economies and fractured governance across small jurisdictions.12 This intersection of historical exploitation and present-day climate vulnerability should be read through the lens of Caribbean constitutional law. The Westminster-model constitutions inherited at independence often framed as evolutionary instruments were built upon legal systems that historically served colonial economic interests. While these constitutions enshrine rights such as the right to life, and in some jurisdictions the right to a healthy environment, their interpretation and enforcement are mediated through institutions shaped by colonial governance structures, with fragmented judicial precedents and varying levels of rights-activist jurisprudence across the region.

Environmental Rights Explored

The foundational documents of the modern human rights era, the United Nations Charter (1945); the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948); and the regional human rights conventions in Europe (1950) and in the Americas (1967) contain no explicit mention of the environment.13 This reality  is reflected in Commonwealth Caribbean constitutions which generally lack an explicit right to a healthy environment. EA Taylor presumes this is largely because most were drafted in the 1960s before the 1972 Stockholm Declaration and, even afterward, political will to entrench such a right has been limited.14

Presently, Jamaica and Guyana are the only two jurisdictions which have an express right to a healthy environment. Section 13(3)(l) of the Jamaican Constitution recognizes the right to enjoy a healthy and productive environment free from the threat of injury or damage from environmental abuse and degradation of the ecological heritage.15 Similarly, Article 149J(1) of the Constitution of Guyana states that all citizens have the right to an environment that is not harmful to their health or well-being.16

Despite enshrining these rights, there has been little jurisprudence in both of these territories which fleshes out the scope. In Ashton Evelyn Pitt v AG of Jamaica the Supreme Court of Jamaica referenced the African Charter as a means of understanding the rights effect in Jamaica. In particular it relied on the decision in Social Economic Rights Action Centre (SERAC) and the Centre for Economic and Social Rights v Nigeria which determined that a necessary component of the right was that it imposed both positive and negative obligations on the Government.17

On the international level there have been significant advancements in fleshing out the contours of the right to a healthy environment. In AO-32/25 the recent advisory opinion on State obligations regarding climate change, the IACtHR reiterated its long held view that the right to a healthy environment “protects the components of the environment, such as forests, rivers, seas and others, as legal interests in themselves, even in the absence of certainty or evidence of risk to individual persons.”18 Further, the IACtHR went further in, pushing the boundaries of international human rights law by articulating an expansive conception of the rights of nature as implicit in, or linked to, the right to a healthy environment because of the vital importance of healthy ecosystems and biodiversity that “make life on the planet possible.”19 Given the recency of the opinion  there has been no attempt to reconcile how the expansive interpretation of this right interfaces with Caribbean constitutions. 

Understanding the modern conception of this right is important particularly for Commonwealth Caribbean countries. This is because, as of 2025, ten Commonwealth Caribbean countries Antigua and Barbuda, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and most recently The Bahamas have joined the Escazú Agreement, the first regional treaty in Latin America and the Caribbean to enshrine procedural environmental rights.20 By signing and acceding, these States have not only committed to guaranteeing access to environmental information, public participation, and justice, but they have also assumed an obligation to align their domestic legal frameworks with the Agreement’s substantive recognition of the right to a healthy environment.21

Separate and apart from the right to a healthy environment, there is also a need to explore state obligations under the right to life.  Historically attempts to derive an environmental right from existing rights especially the right to life (expressly guaranteed in Trinidad and Tobago, and elsewhere framed as a protection against deprivation of life) face counterarguments that the right safeguards mere existence, not quality of life, and is only triggered when life itself is endangered.22 In Trinidad and Tobago for example, Courts have been reluctant to acknowledge the existence of a right to a healthy environment as an extension of the right to life. In Fishermen and Friends of the Sea v The Environmental Management Authority and Atlantic LNG (2004) a High Court a judge disagreed that an illegal grant of a certificate of environmental clearance could breach the constitutional rights to life, protection of the law, and respect for family and private life holding the recognition of same was a matter for parliament.23 This decision is arguably inconsistent with sui generis nature of fundamental human rights provisions.  

Professor Rajendra Ramlogan, in his text the Rise of Environmental Law in Trinidad and Tobago identified that the FFOS v Atlantic LNG was determined whilst the 1998 edition of the NEP was still in effect. In this version of the NEP. Principle 2.1 1998 NEP provides,

 “Article 4 of the Constitution of Trinidad and Tobago declares that every person in Trinidad and Tobago has the fundamental rights of life and the enjoyment of property. Further, the Government of Trinidad and Tobago recognizes that humans influence by their environment and that humans influence and are influenced by their environment and that the natural and built environments affect their well beings. Government therefore accept the responsibility to adopt policies and measures with a view to improving human health and the quality of life. Government also acknowledges that following basic environmental health and development principles are interdependent and in harmony with the Constitution of the nation.”  

Interestingly, like the right to a healthy environment, there has been a move towards a broader and more inclusive understanding of the environmental justice dimensions of the right to life. The IACtHR’s 2017 advisory opinion on the right to a healthy environment, while acknowledging that the right to life is a right distinct from that of a right to a healthy environment, did acknowledge that a state in fulfilling its positive obligation to ensure the full realization of the right to life was under duty to have due regard to the environment, environmental protection and the other basic conditions for human right (inclusive of food and water).24

Additionally, the Caribbean Court of Justice has shown willingness to apply and extend other constitutional principles to cover environmental protection. This is observed in the famous Maya Alliance Decision where the CCJ at paragraph 52 affirmed that the right to protection of the law encompasses the international obligations of the State to recognize and protect the rights of indigenous people. 25

Notwithstanding these developments the contours of environmental obligations under regional constitutions remain largely undefined. Professor Stacy Ann Robinson in explaining the region’s reticence in tangibly outlining the contours of environmental justice for the region states, “Despite the Caribbean's significant contributions to the development of the Western Hemisphere and its deep history of resisting imperial domination and control, the evolution of the environmental justice discourse in the region has not been well documented. A review of the literature reveals an emphasis on identifying environmental injustices as opposed to describing the emergent environmental justice dimensions, and considerations at play or intersecting in the region”26

Ultimately, the region’s entrenched judicial conservatism and limited political will have stifled the development of environmental rights. The way forward requires reconciling inherited constitutional frameworks with modern, expansive understandings of both the right to life and the right to a healthy environment. Only by embedding substantive and procedural environmental justice within Caribbean legal systems can the region begin to meet the profound challenges posed by the climate crisis.

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1.  Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, The Economics of Climate Change (Infographic, 2014) https://www.cepal.org/sites/default/files/infographic/files/infographic_economics_of_climate_change.pdf accessed 13 May 2025.

2. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Chapter 4: Sea Level Rise and Implications for Low-Lying Islands, Coasts, and Communities, Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate (SROCC) (2024) 324 https://www.ipcc.ch/srocc/chapter/chapter-4-sea-level-rise-and-implications-for-low-lying-islands-coasts-and-communities accessed 13 May 2025.

3.  Melissa Wong, ‘New Report Warns Caribbean Countries Could Lose Land to Sea Level Rise’ Loop News (28 November 2023) https://caribbean.loopnews.com/content/new-report-warns-caribbean-countries-could-lose-land-sea-level-rise accessed 13 May 2025.

4. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Climate Change and Food Security: Risks and Responses http://clh-ckan.apps.fao.org/dataset/e32befd2-852d-45f7-b163-5abf23803e74/resource/4655bc74-e36d-4863-9534-a4309b91be4e accessed 13 May 2025.

   
   

5. Global Americans, The Caribbean’s Extreme Vulnerability to Climate Change: A Comprehensive Strategy to Build a Resilient, Secure and Prosperous Western Hemisphere (2019) https://theglobalamericans.org/reports/thecaribbean-extreme-vulnerability-climate-change/ accessed 13 May 2025.

   
   

6. Global Americans, High Level Working Group on Inter-American Relations and Bipartisanship, The Caribbean’s Extreme Vulnerability to Climate Change: A Comprehensive Strategy to Build a Resilient, Secure and Prosperous Western Hemisphere (2019)

   
   

7. Association of Caribbean States, ‘Climate Change and the Caribbean’ (ACS-AEC) https://www.acs-aec.org/en/article/climate-change-and-caribbean accessed 3 September 2025.

   
   

8. Urgenda Foundation v State of Netherlands 2015 Reporter Info: HAZA C/09/00456689 Status: Decided available at: https://climatecasechart.com/non-us-case/urgenda-foundation-v-kingdom-of-the-netherlands/  and “Coalition Deal Presented: €35B for Climate, Nuclear Power, €500M Tax Cuts," NL TIMES (published on December 15, 2021), accessed on March 25, 2024, available at: https://nltimes.nl/2021/12/15/coalition-deal presented-eu35b-climate-nuclear-power-eu500m-tax-cuts?ref=the-wave.ne.

   
   

9. Daniel Billy and others v Australia (Torres Strait Islanders Petition), 2019, Reporter Info: CCPR/C/135/D/3624/2019, Status: Decided. https://climatecasechart.com/non-us-case/petition-of-torres-strait islanders-to-the-united-nations-human-rights-committee-alleging-violations-stemming-from-australias-inaction on-climate-change/.

   
   

10. Thomas & de Freitas v. Guyana, Climate Change Litigation (2022), Status: Undecided, available at: http://climatecasechart.com/non-uscase/thomas-de-freitas-v-guyana/.

    
    

11. Pau de Vilchez Moragues and Annalisa Savaresi, The Right to a Healthy Environment and Climate Litigation: A Game Changer? (2023) Yearbook of International Environmental Law 32(1) 3–19 https://academic.oup.com/yielaw/article/32/1/3/6982625 accessed 25 March 2024.

    
    

12. April Karen Baptiste and Stacy-ann Robinson, The contours of environmental justice in the Caribbean (2023) Geographical Journal 189(4) 1–8 DOI: 10.1111/geoj.12545 https://doi.org/10.1111/geoj.12545 accessed 3 September 2025.

    
    

13. Winston Anderson, ‘Remarks at the First Session of the United Nations Environment Assembly Global Symposium’ (24 June 2014) https://www.ccj.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Remarks-at-the-First-Session-of-the-United-Nations-Environment-Assembly-Global-Symposium_Justice-Winston-Anderson_20140624.pdf accessed 3 September 2025.

    
    

14. Errol Taylor, ‘Fundamental Human Right to a Healthy Environment in Commonwealth Caribbean Law’ (1994) 9 Caribbean Law Review https://journals.sta.uwi.edu/clr/index.php/clr/article/view/1928 accessed 3 September 2025.

    
    

15. Constitution of Jamaica s 13(3)(l).

    
    

16. Constitution of the Co-operative Republic of Guyana art 149J.

    
    

17. [2018] JMFC Full 7

    
    

18. Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR), Advisory Opinion AO-32/25 (29 May 2025) ‘Climate Emergency and Human Rights’. At 273

    
    

19. Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR), Advisory Opinion AO-32/25 (29 May 2025) ‘Climate Emergency and Human Rights’. At 273

    
    

20. Regional Agreement on Access to Information, Public Participation and Justice in Environmental Matters in Latin America and the Caribbean (signed 27 September 2018, entered into force 22 April 2021) UNTS vol 3388 No 56654 (Escazú Agreement).

    
    

21. Regional Agreement on Access to Information, Public Participation and Justice in Environmental Matters in Latin America and the Caribbean (signed 27 September 2018, entered into force 22 April 2021) UNTS vol 3388 No 56654 (Escazú Agreement).

    
    

22. Errol Taylor, ‘Fundamental Human Right to a Healthy Environment in Commonwealth Caribbean Law’ (1994) 9 Caribbean Law Review https://journals.sta.uwi.edu/clr/index.php/clr/article/view/1928 accessed 3 September 2025.

    
    

23. Fishermen and Friends of the Sea v Environmental Management Authority and Atlantic LNG Company of Trinidad and Tobago HCA No 2028 of 2003 (Sup Ct of Judicature of Trinidad and Tobago).

    
    

24. Advisory Opinion OC-23/17, Environment and Human Rights (State obligations in relation to the environment in the context of the protection and guarantee of the rights to life and to personal integrity – interpretation and scope of articles 4(1) and 5(1) in relation to articles 1(1) and 2 of the American Convention on Human Rights) (Inter-American Court of Human Rights, 15 November 2017).

    
    

25. Maya Leaders Alliance and others v Attorney General of Belize [2015] CCJ 15 (AJ)

    
    

26. April Karen Baptiste and Stacy-ann Robinson, The contours of environmental justice in the Caribbean (2023) Geographical Journal 189(4) 1–8 DOI: 10.1111/geoj.12545 https://doi.org/10.1111/geoj.12545 accessed 3 September 2025.