Abstract

Since climate change is an environmental phenomenon with social consequences, this article aims to establish the content of climate change State’s obligations and, based on these, to consolidate their connection with the right of access to justice. Both are instruments to control the effects of climate change. For this purpose, in the first section, we will deal with the direct obligations of the State and individuals face to climate change. Afterwards, we will analyze the way climate justice is currently a cross-cutting guarantee in the right of access to justice, through national and regional judicial examples. It is concluded that despite the existence of great procedural challenges to enforce the right to access to climate justice, the progressive evolution towards climate obligations with greater coercive content allow us to foresee an increase in national and regional litigation, in order to an effective enforcement of the States and private corporations’ climate obligations.