#  Judicial Dialogues on Health and Climate Change: Emerging Standards, Comparative Trajectories, and Future Directions 

 



## October 29–30, 2026

**The first day is open to the public. The second day is closed to the public.**

This event convenes judges, litigators, and scholars from Africa, Europe, and Latin America for a comparative examination of the evolving relationship between climate change, the right to health, and judicial enforcement.

Over the past decade, climate change has shifted from being approached primarily as an environmental problem addressed through multilateral diplomacy to becoming an increasingly complex human rights and public health challenge contested within judicial arenas. While scientific assessments now show with high confidence how climate change affects human health—altering patterns of infectious disease and triggering cascading effects on mental health and chronic conditions—these impacts represent only the surface of a more complex reality. Their severity and distribution are mediated by long-standing inequalities—rooted in gender, race, ethnicity, socio-economic status, disability, and geography—and they intersect with pre-existing environmental burdens such as water and air pollution, thereby rendering the climate– health nexus a profoundly multifaceted and unequal terrain.

The central question is no longer whether climate change should be judicialized, but how actors ought to conceive of and interpret the health–climate nexus in light of emerging international norms, evolving constitutional provisions, and the multifaceted—and unequal—nature of climate-related health harm.

The dialogue will proceed along three core lines of inquiry:

1. Explore cross-regional emerging jurisprudential standards, including the reception and implementation of recent advisory opinions from ITLOS, the ICJ, and the IACtHR.
2. Identify—and begin to address—the interpretative and procedural limits, as well as the opportunities, when adjudicating climate-related health harms, particularly in ways that confront the underlying inequalities through which certain populations bear a disproportionate share of the most severe impacts.
3. Draw on a decade of litigation experiences to outline future directions for advancing more coherent, context-sensitive, and rights-based judicial approaches to the health–climate nexus.

*This event is cosponsored by Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School; The Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability; FXB Center for Health and Human Rights; Harvard Global Health Institute; Environmental & Energy Law Program, Harvard Law School; Human Rights Program, Harvard Law School; and the Walter Gruyter Foundation.*



 

##  Conveners 

 



  [### I. Glenn Cohen

 ](/people/i-glenn-cohen)Chair, Canada Program Faculty Committee; Faculty Associate. 

James A. Attwood and Leslie Williams Professor of Law; Deputy Dean; Faculty Director, Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology & Bioethics, Harvard Law School.

 

 

**Research interests:** Medical AI; mobile health and other health information technologies; abortion; reproduction/reproductive technology; therapeutic use of psychedelic drugs; research ethics; organ transplantation; rationing in law and medicine; health...



 

 

      ![cohen-glenn.jpg](/sites/g/files/omnuum8891/files/styles/hwp_4_5__690x865/public/2025-07/cohen-glenn.jpg?h=0b596ad0&itok=-upKLwEz) 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

### Alicia Ely Yamin

Lecturer on Law, Harvard Law School; Director, Global Health and Rights Project, Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics, Harvard Law School; Adjunct Senior Lecturer on Health Policy and Management, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.



 

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##  Valuing Accessiblity 

The Weatherhead Center for International Affairs welcomes individuals with disabilities to participate in its programs and activities. If you would like to request accommodations or have questions about the access provided, please get in touch with the person listed as the contact on the individual event listing in advance of your participation or visit. Requests for Sign Language interpreters and/or CART providers should be made at least two weeks in advance, if possible. Please note that the Weatherhead Center will make every effort to secure services, but that services are subject to availability.



 

 



 

 See also:- [ Conferences ](/content-types/conferences)
- [ 2026 ](/content-types/2026)