Climate Litigation Cases in Latin America and the Caribbean

In January 2022, the political party Rede Sustentabilidade (Rede) filed an Action for Non-Compliance with Fundamental Precept (ADPF) with a request for precautionary measures against the Government of Brazil, due to the omission of allocating resources to the National Institute of Space Research (INPE), as well as for lack of monitoring of deforestation in the "Cerrado" ecoregion in Brazil.

On November 11, 2020, an Action for Non-Compliance with Fundamental Precept (ADPF 760) was filed by the political parties (PSB, Rede, PDT, Green Party, PT, PSOL and PCdoB) together with civil society organizations (APIB, Greenpeace, Conectas, Alana, Terrazul, Observatorio do CLIma, etc.), against the Federal Union and organs of the Federal Public Administration – IBAMA, ICMBio and FUNAI – for non-compliance with the Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Legal Amazon (PPCDAm).

This Action for Non-Compliance with a Fundamental Precept (ADPF), brought by the Workers' Party (PT), denounces the Brazilian Federal Executive Branch's failure to fulfill its constitutional duties to protect, prevent, monitor, and conserve the environment, particularly in the face of the advancing fires in the Pantanal and the Amazon.

Direct Action of Unconstitutionality (ADI) 7146 was filed by the PT, PSB, PSOL, and Rede Sustentabilidade parties before the Supreme Federal Court of Brazil, challenging Federal Law No. 14,285/2021, which modifies the protection regime for Permanent Preservation Areas (APPs) in urban zones. This law transfers to municipalities and the Federal District the authority to define protection zones along urban waterways, in contravention of the minimum limits established by the Forest Code (Law No. 12,651/2012).

This is a Fundamental Precept Breach Action (ADPF), filed by four political parties with a request for precautionary measures. The purpose of the action was to reactivate the federal environmental sanctioning process, which, according to the plaintiffs, had been paralyzed by actions of the Federal Government. The parties alleged that the Executive Branch had been dismantling the national environmental protection system, which was reflected in the increase in deforestation and fires in the Amazon and the Pantanal, even affecting Indigenous lands.

This is an action brought by the Green Party (PV) against two Presidential Decrees (n. 10.341/2020 and n. 10.539/2020) and an Ordinance of the Ministry of Defense (n. 1.804/2020) that authorized the action of the Armed Forces in the fight against environmental crimes and outbreaks of fire “in the border strip, in indigenous lands, in federal environmental conservation units and in other federal areas of the states of the Legal Amazon.”