Human rights-based climate litigation, national courts, and Indigenous peoples: An exploratory study

There is growing recognition of climate litigation as a pivotal force in advancing climate governance. As climate change is increasingly understood as a serious threat to global human rights, human rights-based litigation has gained prominence as a legal strategy to confront these challenges. However, the intersection of Indigenous peoples and climate litigation remains underexplored in scholarly discourse. This article provides an exploratory analysis of two landmark national-level cases involving Indigenous communities: Decision SU-698/17 (2017) from the Colombian Constitutional Court and Smith v. Fonterra (Citation2024) from the Supreme Court of New Zealand. Using the mechanisms, actors, and pathways (MAPS) framework, it investigates how legal culture and legal claims, national courts, and Indigenous communities shaped climate litigation. The article also assesses the effectiveness of human rights–based climate litigation as a mechanism for social transformation.