Climate Litigation Cases in Latin America and the Caribbean

On December 10, 2020, members of the Waorani Nation and non-governmental organizations promoted a protection action before the Judicial Unit in the Amazon region, because the Chinese oil company PetroOriental SA was contaminating ancestral territories and violating their constitutional rights, due to the emission of greenhouse gases (GHG) that cause climate change.

This Action for Non-Compliance with a Fundamental Precept (ADPF) was filed by the Rede Sustentabilidade party against CONAMA Resolutions 500/2020 and 499/2020. The first repealed regulations governing irrigation permits and defining Permanent Preservation Areas (APPs) in reservoirs, mangroves, and sandbanks; the second modified the permitting process for burning waste in rotary kilns.

The Federal Public Prosecutor's Office (MPF) filed a civil lawsuit against the State of São Paulo, CETESB, and IBAMA, seeking the suspension and annulment of all licenses and authorizations issued by the state environmental agency for the controlled burning of sugarcane straw in the municipalities of the Campinas Judicial Subsection.

The Federal Public Prosecutor's Office (MPF) promoted a Public Civil Action (ACP) lawsuit with a request for urgent protection, against Sebastião da Costa Mariano, for the illegal deforestation of 903.22 hectares of native forest in the municipality of Boca do Acre/AM, within the "Buen Lugar Farmland", a public area of the Union.

This is a Public Civil Action (ACP), with a request for precautionary measures, filed by the organizations Socio-Environmental Institute, Greenpeace Brazil and Brazilian Association of Members of the Public Ministry of the Environment (ABRAMPA, for its acronym in Portuguese), and the Federal Government, seeking the declaration of nullity of the Interpretative Resolution 7036900/2020 of IBAMA, which eliminated the need for authorization issued by the agency for the export of timber products and by-products of native species.

The Public Prosecutor's Office of Mato Grosso filed a civil lawsuit against Nelson Naború Yabuta for the deforestation of native trees on his private property, located within a protected area of the Juara community in Mato Grosso. The case was heard by a district court in Juara, which ordered the defendant to pay 20 million reais in compensation for environmental damage and to submit a technical project called "PRAD" to recover the degraded area, restoring the original conditions of the vegetation affected by the illegal deforestation.

On June 21, 2022, the organization Conectas Direitos Humanos initiated a public civil action against BNDES (Brazilian Development Bank) and BNDESPAR (BNDES' subsidiary responsible for managing equity stakes in several Brazilian companies). Conectas requested the granting of various precautionary measures, arguing that the defendants lack rules or protocols for assessing the impacts of their investments on exacerbating the climate crisis.

Political parties filed two Direct Actions of Unconstitutionality by Omission (ADIO 59 and ADIO 60, for their acronym in Portuguese) before the Supreme Federal Court (STF) to have the omission of the Union in relation to the paralysis of the Amazon Fund recognized.

Indigenous and environmental organizations filed a Public Civil Action against the Union, the National Department of Transport Infrastructure (DNIT) and the Brazilian Institute of the Environment (IBAMA), for issuing public notice number 130/2021, which authorizes the hiring of a company to design and build the expansion of the BR-364 highway that would connect the Cruzeiro do Sul section, in Acre, Brazil to a point on the border between Brazil and Peru and that would cross the Serra do Divisor National Park.

The Institute of Amazonian Studies (IEA) filed a public climate civil action with the Federal Court of Curitiba, Paraná, against the Federal Union (Brazilian Federal Government), for non-compliance with the climate goals on the reduction of deforestation in the Amazon, established in the Plan for the Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Legal Amazon (PPCDAm, for its acronym in Portuguese), -one of the instruments of the National Climate Change Policy of Brazil-, which correspond to the reduction by the year 2020, of 80% of the average of the annual