A Health-Centric Intersectional Approach to Climate Litigation at the European Court of Human Rights

Climate change affects everyone’s health. At the same time, because of specific risk
factors, some groups have a greater chance of becoming sick as a result of climate change
than others. Evaluating these inequitable impacts through a health-centric intersectional
approach—which considers overlapping factors like gender, age, residence, and prior
health status—reveals significant health risks often overlooked in current human rightsbased
cases. While the climate change litigation movement is thriving, evidence-based
intersectional health risks remain surprisingly underexposed. This Article argues that a
health-centric intersectional approach to climate change cases can enhance accountability
for the impacts of climate change. We demonstrate the advantages of this approach in
relation to two climate change cases recently decided by the European Court of Human
Rights: Verein KlimaSeniorinnen v. Switzerland and Duarte Agostinho v. Portugal
and 32 other States. We further show that a health-centric intersectional approach
could avoid certain procedural and substantive pitfalls while responding more readily to
climate-related health inequity.