Chairs:

• Lorenzo Cuocolo – lorenzo.cuocolo@cuocolo.it
• René Urueña – rf.uruena21@uniandes.edu.co

SPEAKERS

Francesco	Gallarati
Rosa	Iannaccone
Salvador	Millaleo
Thalia	Viveros Uehara
Vicente	Solano

Climate change has become a decisive test for constitutional sustainability, revealing the need for courts to address whether insufficient climate action violates constitutional rights and State obligations. Also, it leads to an increasing use of and interest in participatory instruments in climate and environmental decision-making. The recent Klimaseniorinnen judgment by the European Court of Human Rights (2024) proves that inadequate measures can amount to breaches of fundamental rights such as life and health, while also interpreting the Paris Agreement as part of the normative context that informs States’ positive obligations. Similarly, in its Advisory Opinion OC-32/25 (2025), the Inter-American Court of Human Rights recognized the right to a healthy climate as an enforceable human right, deciding that States must adopt preventive, mitigation, and adaptation measures consistent with international commitments. At the national level, constitutional courts have reinforced this judicial trend. The German Federal Constitutional Court in Neubauer (2021), the Constitutional Court of Korea in its Climate Law Case (2024), and the Colombian Supreme Court in Future Generations v. Ministry of the Environment (2018) have stated that weak or insufficient climate policies are incompatible with constitutional guarantees and fundamental rights. These rulings underscore that climate protection cannot be seen as just a matter of policy discretion, but as a constitutional and international obligation, enforceable through judicial review.

Furthermore, the increasingly intense climate and environmental crisis not only has prompted citizens to gather in movements and demonstrations, but also has led them to demand greater involvement in climate and environmental decisions. This situation has had a destabilizing impact on today’s democratic societies, but it is not the only one. In fact, it is commonly accepted by scholarship that this phenomenon is embedded in a more general “crisis of democracy”. This is not only evident in the numerous citizens’ assemblies or conventions established in various European countries, both at national and sub-state level, to debate and propose solutions to the climate and environmental crisis, but also in experiences such as the Icelandic Constituent Assembly, those of the Andean countries and the constitutional reform assemblies, including those established in Ireland and France, as well as the most recent Conference on the Future of Europe. There are, however, cases, such as those of Ecuador and Bolivia, where the use of popular participation in environmental decisions is not a mere response to the “crisis of democracy”, but reflects the worldview of indigenous peoples, which permeates their respective constitutional texts. Another interesting case is India, whose Constitution provides for “Panchayats”, or village assemblies, as the third level of government of the Union, constitutionalizing Gandhi’s idea of grassroots democracy starting from the villages. The workshop aims to explore these developments, both in terms of jurisprudence and participation, from a broad comparative perspective, analyzing how the constitutional systems of different regions—Europe, Latin America, Asia and beyond—are responding to the crisis caused by climate change. This workshop proposal already counts on the participation of Rosa Iannaccone (University of Sassari), Davide Ragone (Sapienza University of Rome) and Thalia Viveros (Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, Heidelberg). Further abstract proposals are welcome, that intersects the topic of the workshop and adopt a similar multi-faceted and multi-layered perspective.