By Gisselle García Maning *
In the last two years, courts in Colombia and Costa Rica faced the same question: can environmental impact assessments ignore climate change? The answer was no. Climate must now be part of the analysis before deciding which projects can be implemented and how.
The environmental impact assessment (EIA) process is an essential tool for preventing, mitigating, and restoring the damage that development projects can cause to the environment. It has evolved in various ways across different jurisdictions.
The strengthening and constant evolution of this tool is crucial in a context of climate and environmental crisis, as well as increasing deregulation and institutional weakening in Latin America. Its administrative and preventative nature makes it one of the last institutional barriers to ensuring that, when evaluated and potentially authorized, large development projects—whether industrial, real estate, agricultural, tourism, or of any other kind—consider environmental, climate, and human rights criteria appropriate to our times.
Experience has shown us that Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) must evolve to incorporate considerations related to the climate crisis, such as the quantification of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the assessment of cumulative impacts, the analysis of climate risks, and the adaptive capacity of projects to face scenarios of greater vulnerability. This transformation responds not only to the advancement of scientific knowledge, but also to the consolidation of international obligations derived from the Paris Agreement, Inter-American jurisprudence on climate matters—such as the advisory opinions of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR)—and the national mitigation and adaptation commitments assumed by States.
In this context, climate litigation has become an effective mechanism for promoting the integration of climate considerations into Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) processes. Particularly in Costa Rica and Colombia, the adequacy of these assessments has been questioned when they fail to consider the climate impacts of authorized projects and the effects of climate change on them. Below, we will analyze these two experiences and their outcomes.
Two cases in two countries with the same objective
Latin America is a region affected by the expansion of infrastructure, mining, hydrocarbon, and energy projects. More recently, it has also faced increasing pressure to weaken environmental regulations. In this context, two cases represent a new generation of litigation aimed at transforming environmental permitting procedures: one in Colombia and the other in Costa Rica.
Both cases start from a common premise: environmental impact assessment must evolve with the times to incorporate, in a mandatory way, the climate variable and thus respond to the present and future risks caused by global warming.
- The case of Colombia
In July 2024, two organizations —ILEX Acción Jurídica and Dejusticia— filed a lawsuit of unconstitutionality before the Constitutional Court, noting that article 57 of Law 99 of 1993 did not include the obligation to prevent and manage the effects of climate change nor to guarantee the protection of human rights.
In the lawsuit, they requested the updating of the regulation so that the climate variable would be included in environmental impact studies.
A year later, the court issued Ruling C-280 of 2024, ordering the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development to update the terms of reference for preparing impact studies and to include climate change in these studies. Additionally, it urged Congress to enact regulations that include the variables, measures, and tools the State must use for these studies.
This ruling is considered iconic, one of the most relevant precedents in the region, as it updated the scope of Colombian environmental licensing in accordance with the principles of prevention, precaution, sustainable development and the constitutional and international obligations assumed by the State.
- The case of Costa Rica
In December 2024, an independent lawyer filed an appeal with the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice alleging that the Executive Branch and the National Environmental Technical Secretariat (SETENA), attached to the Ministry of Environment and Energy (MINAE), failed to include climate impacts in the environmental impact assessment (EIA) procedures.
This omission, he argued, violated the right to a healthy environment and the right of present and future generations to a safe climate, in addition to ignoring the obligations derived from international instruments such as the Paris Agreement, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Advisory Opinion OC-23/17 of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
In June 2026, the Constitutional Chamber accepted the appeal and ordered MINAE and SETENA to modify the regulatory framework to incorporate, within a maximum period of 18 months, the obligation to evaluate climate risks and impacts, in addition to the mitigation and adaptation measures that project developers must implement.
Although both lawsuits use different procedural mechanisms, a public action of unconstitutionality in Colombia and a writ of amparo in Costa Rica, they share the same vision on the function of environmental impact assessment.
The evolution of EIAs: from traditional environmental protection to climate assessment
The cases described portray an important transformation process where civil society demands the updating of the rules of administrative decision-making so that they are in line with our times.
Traditionally, Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) have been instruments focused exclusively on evaluating biophysical and abiotic (and sometimes socioeconomic) impacts. However, reality itself compels us to recognize the need for tools capable of analyzing how these projects influence the climate crisis and how the projects themselves are vulnerable to the effects of climate change.
In this sense, litigation has acted as a driver of legal innovation, helping to close regulatory gaps and strengthen the State's preventative capacity. The result is a progressive "climatization" of environmental impact assessments, in which climate analysis ceases to be a discretionary consideration and becomes an indispensable legal requirement for granting environmental permits.
The role of international law
The litigation in Costa Rica and Colombia was based primarily on the Paris Agreement and —in the Costa Rican case— on Advisory Opinion OC-23/17 of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, both cited in the previous section.
On the other hand, Advisory Opinion 32 (OC-32/25) on climate emergency and human rights of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, although issued after the Colombian judgment and practically contemporaneous with the development of the Costa Rican case, consolidated and strengthened the judgment of the Constitutional Chamber of Costa Rica thanks to the subsequent presentation of various auxiliary submissions that invoked this opinion.
Similarly, the majority of the Constitutional Chamber valued the criteria of the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice, which recognize the need to consider in environmental impact studies the effects on the global climate system, as well as the risks associated with GHG emissions, within the framework of international obligations for environmental protection and cooperation between States.
Challenges for quantifying GHG emissions and cumulative impacts in EIAs
However, although the cases presented represent a very important legal advance in the region, the big question is: what happens with the implementation of these types of rulings?
Incorporating climate variables into Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) presents significant technical, methodological, legal, and institutional challenges. While there is a great need to assess greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and the cumulative impacts of projects, its implementation faces several challenges, including:
- Quantifying GHG emissions: One of the main challenges is determining which emissions should be included in the EIA and how to quantify them consistently. It is under debate whether EIAs should be limited to direct project emissions (scope 1), whether they should incorporate indirect emissions from energy consumption (scope 2), or even those generated throughout the project's life cycle, including those from suppliers, transportation, and end-use of the product (scope 3).
- Cumulative impact assessment: Another important challenge is assessing cumulative impacts, that is, those resulting from the interaction of multiple existing, approved, or anticipated projects. It is worth noting that, in Latin America, many EIAs continue to evaluate projects in isolation, without considering synergistic effects on watersheds, ecosystems, or biological corridors.
- Causal attribution: From a legal and scientific perspective, demonstrating the relationship between emissions from a specific project and certain climate impacts is complex. However, the evolution of attribution science and climate litigation has lessened this difficulty, allowing for the analysis of the incremental contribution of certain sectors or projects.
- Institutional capacities. Incorporating the climate variable requires environmental authorities with specialized technical capabilities. Many countries in the region lack standardized protocols and methodologies and face significant budget shortfalls. These limitations can result in superficial reviews of submitted studies.
In conclusion, the challenges of incorporating climate change into environmental assessments lie not only in regulatory adjustments, but also in developing standardized, transparent, and scientifically robust methodologies that allow for quantifying GHG emissions, assessing cumulative impacts, and analyzing the compatibility of projects with national and international climate objectives.
This process will require strengthening the technical capacities of environmental authorities, improving data availability, and consolidating regulatory frameworks that harmonize climate science with the preventive and precautionary principles of environmental law.
Benefits of improving the quality of EIAs and building judicial standards.
The progress achieved through climate litigation in Costa Rica and Colombia offers a hopeful message for the region. They establish replicable judicial standards that strengthen the tools and institutional processes for environmental protection and the response to the climate crisis.
Courts can play a transformative role by establishing criteria that progressively improve the quality of environmental assessments and ensure that public decisions are compatible with the best scientific evidence, principles of environmental law, climate obligations and the protection of human rights.
In this way, climate litigation ceases to be merely a reaction mechanism and becomes an instrument for the continuous improvement of environmental and climate governance in Latin America.
By Gisselle García Maning *
In the last two years, courts in Colombia and Costa Rica faced the same question: can environmental impact assessments ignore climate change? The answer was no. Climate must now be part of the analysis before deciding which projects can be implemented and how.
The environmental impact assessment (EIA) process is an essential tool for preventing, mitigating, and restoring the damage that development projects can cause to the environment. It has evolved in various ways across different jurisdictions.
The strengthening and constant evolution of this tool is crucial in a context of climate and environmental crisis, as well as increasing deregulation and institutional weakening in Latin America. Its administrative and preventative nature makes it one of the last institutional barriers to ensuring that, when evaluated and potentially authorized, large development projects—whether industrial, real estate, agricultural, tourism, or of any other kind—consider environmental, climate, and human rights criteria appropriate to our times.
Experience has shown us that Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) must evolve to incorporate considerations related to the climate crisis, such as the quantification of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the assessment of cumulative impacts, the analysis of climate risks, and the adaptive capacity of projects to face scenarios of greater vulnerability. This transformation responds not only to the advancement of scientific knowledge, but also to the consolidation of international obligations derived from the Paris Agreement, Inter-American jurisprudence on climate matters—such as the advisory opinions of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR)—and the national mitigation and adaptation commitments assumed by States.
In this context, climate litigation has become an effective mechanism for promoting the integration of climate considerations into Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) processes. Particularly in Costa Rica and Colombia, the adequacy of these assessments has been questioned when they fail to consider the climate impacts of authorized projects and the effects of climate change on them. Below, we will analyze these two experiences and their outcomes.
Two cases in two countries with the same objective
Latin America is a region affected by the expansion of infrastructure, mining, hydrocarbon, and energy projects. More recently, it has also faced increasing pressure to weaken environmental regulations. In this context, two cases represent a new generation of litigation aimed at transforming environmental permitting procedures: one in Colombia and the other in Costa Rica.
Both cases start from a common premise: environmental impact assessment must evolve with the times to incorporate, in a mandatory way, the climate variable and thus respond to the present and future risks caused by global warming.
- The case of Colombia
In July 2024, two organizations —ILEX Acción Jurídica and Dejusticia— filed a lawsuit of unconstitutionality before the Constitutional Court, noting that article 57 of Law 99 of 1993 did not include the obligation to prevent and manage the effects of climate change nor to guarantee the protection of human rights.
In the lawsuit, they requested the updating of the regulation so that the climate variable would be included in environmental impact studies.
A year later, the court issued Ruling C-280 of 2024, ordering the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development to update the terms of reference for preparing impact studies and to include climate change in these studies. Additionally, it urged Congress to enact regulations that include the variables, measures, and tools the State must use for these studies.
This ruling is considered iconic, one of the most relevant precedents in the region, as it updated the scope of Colombian environmental licensing in accordance with the principles of prevention, precaution, sustainable development and the constitutional and international obligations assumed by the State.
- The case of Costa Rica
In December 2024, an independent lawyer filed an appeal with the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice alleging that the Executive Branch and the National Environmental Technical Secretariat (SETENA), attached to the Ministry of Environment and Energy (MINAE), failed to include climate impacts in the environmental impact assessment (EIA) procedures.
This omission, he argued, violated the right to a healthy environment and the right of present and future generations to a safe climate, in addition to ignoring the obligations derived from international instruments such as the Paris Agreement, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Advisory Opinion OC-23/17 of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
In June 2026, the Constitutional Chamber accepted the appeal and ordered MINAE and SETENA to modify the regulatory framework to incorporate, within a maximum period of 18 months, the obligation to evaluate climate risks and impacts, in addition to the mitigation and adaptation measures that project developers must implement.
Although both lawsuits use different procedural mechanisms, a public action of unconstitutionality in Colombia and a writ of amparo in Costa Rica, they share the same vision on the function of environmental impact assessment.
The evolution of EIAs: from traditional environmental protection to climate assessment
The cases described portray an important transformation process where civil society demands the updating of the rules of administrative decision-making so that they are in line with our times.
Traditionally, Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) have been instruments focused exclusively on evaluating biophysical and abiotic (and sometimes socioeconomic) impacts. However, reality itself compels us to recognize the need for tools capable of analyzing how these projects influence the climate crisis and how the projects themselves are vulnerable to the effects of climate change.
In this sense, litigation has acted as a driver of legal innovation, helping to close regulatory gaps and strengthen the State's preventative capacity. The result is a progressive "climatization" of environmental impact assessments, in which climate analysis ceases to be a discretionary consideration and becomes an indispensable legal requirement for granting environmental permits.
The role of international law
The litigation in Costa Rica and Colombia was based primarily on the Paris Agreement and —in the Costa Rican case— on Advisory Opinion OC-23/17 of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, both cited in the previous section.
On the other hand, Advisory Opinion 32 (OC-32/25) on climate emergency and human rights of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, although issued after the Colombian judgment and practically contemporaneous with the development of the Costa Rican case, consolidated and strengthened the judgment of the Constitutional Chamber of Costa Rica thanks to the subsequent presentation of various auxiliary submissions that invoked this opinion.
Similarly, the majority of the Constitutional Chamber valued the criteria of the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice, which recognize the need to consider in environmental impact studies the effects on the global climate system, as well as the risks associated with GHG emissions, within the framework of international obligations for environmental protection and cooperation between States.
Challenges for quantifying GHG emissions and cumulative impacts in EIAs
However, although the cases presented represent a very important legal advance in the region, the big question is: what happens with the implementation of these types of rulings?
Incorporating climate variables into Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) presents significant technical, methodological, legal, and institutional challenges. While there is a great need to assess greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and the cumulative impacts of projects, its implementation faces several challenges, including:
- Quantifying GHG emissions: One of the main challenges is determining which emissions should be included in the EIA and how to quantify them consistently. It is under debate whether EIAs should be limited to direct project emissions (scope 1), whether they should incorporate indirect emissions from energy consumption (scope 2), or even those generated throughout the project's life cycle, including those from suppliers, transportation, and end-use of the product (scope 3).
- Cumulative impact assessment: Another important challenge is assessing cumulative impacts, that is, those resulting from the interaction of multiple existing, approved, or anticipated projects. It is worth noting that, in Latin America, many EIAs continue to evaluate projects in isolation, without considering synergistic effects on watersheds, ecosystems, or biological corridors.
- Causal attribution: From a legal and scientific perspective, demonstrating the relationship between emissions from a specific project and certain climate impacts is complex. However, the evolution of attribution science and climate litigation has lessened this difficulty, allowing for the analysis of the incremental contribution of certain sectors or projects.
- Institutional capacities. Incorporating the climate variable requires environmental authorities with specialized technical capabilities. Many countries in the region lack standardized protocols and methodologies and face significant budget shortfalls. These limitations can result in superficial reviews of submitted studies.
In conclusion, the challenges of incorporating climate change into environmental assessments lie not only in regulatory adjustments, but also in developing standardized, transparent, and scientifically robust methodologies that allow for quantifying GHG emissions, assessing cumulative impacts, and analyzing the compatibility of projects with national and international climate objectives.
This process will require strengthening the technical capacities of environmental authorities, improving data availability, and consolidating regulatory frameworks that harmonize climate science with the preventive and precautionary principles of environmental law.
Benefits of improving the quality of EIAs and building judicial standards.
The progress achieved through climate litigation in Costa Rica and Colombia offers a hopeful message for the region. They establish replicable judicial standards that strengthen the tools and institutional processes for environmental protection and the response to the climate crisis.
Courts can play a transformative role by establishing criteria that progressively improve the quality of environmental assessments and ensure that public decisions are compatible with the best scientific evidence, principles of environmental law, climate obligations and the protection of human rights.
In this way, climate litigation ceases to be merely a reaction mechanism and becomes an instrument for the continuous improvement of environmental and climate governance in Latin America.