Strategic Toolbox for Intersectional Justice
Cristina Hernandez Hurtado,
Theresa Mockel,
Felipe Bley Folly
European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR)
Policy paper
2026
Corporate activities have largely contributed to the climate and ecological crisis not only by emitting greenhouse gases, but also by causing environmental destruction that diminishes the resilience of ecosystems and affected people in counteracting climate change. Biodiversity loss, mostly driven by private actors from agribusiness, including the pesticides and livestock industries, fisheries, forestry, and infrastructure, poses a significant risk to human rights.
Meanwhile, solutions to the climate crisis are often guided by technical, market-driven approaches, while mainstream biodiversity protection follows a conservationist logic that treats nature as an abstract asset that can be easily commodified. These trends can be seen in carbon offsetting projects, green energy projects, and other “green transition” initiatives that often reproduce the neocolonial and exploitative patterns that contributed to the climate crisis.
Frequently, these projects concentrate land and natural resources in the hands of a few private and predominantly corporate actors, threatening collective and other forms of land tenure of Indigenous peoples, fisherfolk, peasants and other traditional rural communities, often coupled with negative impacts on biodiversity.
As part of ECCHR’s efforts to address gaps in corporate accountability and following discussions with concerned partners from the global majority, we decided to explore what breaking existing silos between climate, environmental, and human rights litigation could look like, building upon our integrative human rights approach to climate justice. We believe that collective efforts toward more intersectional justice (in particular bridging, climate, environmental, and land justice) will be key to developing meaningful legal protections that respond to the multi-dimensional aspects of this crisis, and, in the end, guarantee the “habitability” of our planet.
Spanish version: Clima, biodiversidad y derechos humanos: caja de herramientas para una aproximación interseccional
