Traditional knowledge in Latin American climate litigation
In Latin America, about 35% of forests are inhabited by Indigenous groups. Their knowledge plays a vital role in understanding and responding to climate change. This knowledge, accumulated over generations, complements scientific data by providing region-specific and chronological accuracy essential for verifying large-scale climate models. While Indigenous knowledge has gained increasing recognition in climate policies, particularly in adaptation strategies, its role in climate litigation remains less explored.
In Ecuador, a 2020 lawsuit filed by civil society organizations and Indigenous communities challenged PetroOriental S.A. over gas flaring in the Amazon. This lawsuit sought to halt gas flaring and secure recognition of violations against the rights of nature, along with reparations for damages. In the absence of scientific studies, plaintiffs presented the ancestral knowledge of the Waorani people as evidence, to support that gas flaring disrupted carbon cycles and harmed the local environment. While the judge acknowledged the validity of traditional knowledge, the court ultimately ruled that Indigenous testimonies failed to demonstrate measurable changes in biodiversity, species abundance, or ecosystem stability.
This case underscores the need for collaborative methods to collect and present evidence integrating both traditional and scientific knowledge. Many Latin American countries still lack comprehensive information systems to document and integrate Indigenous climate knowledge in a way that is both accessible and applicable, limiting joint production of robust proof for climate litigation. Furthermore, traditional knowledge is gradually being lost as Indigenous communities experience the erosion of their social, economic, and political structures, driven by external economic and development pressures.
What challenges do Latin American courts face in using scientific evidence?
Like many other lower-income regions, limited access to scientific knowledge remains a major hurdle for both lawyers and judges in Latin America, where legal practice is often less integrated with technical expertise. Besides the economic costs incurred, the dominance of English in academic research, databases and analytical tools creates a major obstacle for legal professionals in non-English-speaking countries, making it even harder for them to use scientific evidence in court.
Another big challenge for strengthening climate litigation in Latin America is the shortage of specialized environmental judges. While some countries – like Chile, Bolivia, Brazil, Costa Rica and Peru – have made progress by setting up environmental courts, most countries in the region still lack such specialized judicial bodies. These courts are crucial because they offer a more effective and efficient way to handle environmental disputes.
Beyond legal practice, disparities in the availability of scientific evidence also hinders climate litigation efforts in Latin America. Most climate research and data come from the US and Europe, giving cases in those regions a stronger foundation, while many lower-income countries struggle to build legal arguments due to gaps in research. Data on extreme weather attribution and climate impacts are especially scarce, often due to poor historical records and limited access to high-quality climate models.
Moreover, higher-income countries’ dominance in climate science has led to bias in the research that overlooks the realities of vulnerable regions and excludes them from producing climate knowledge. This not only limits their ability to respond effectively, but also fuels a major underestimation of the climate crisis in low and middle income countries.
Resource limitations of local communities and NGOs that often lead such cases face a disadvantage when taking on powerful interests, which often align with the state. These disparities can increase the pressure on litigators to provide evidence at a depth and rigor that cannot easily compete with the expertise that companies can buy. Local litigators frequently operate with constrained budgets, relying on pro bono legal assistance, philanthropic backing, and crowdfunding to support their cases. Corporations can prolong cases indefinitely, using procedural delays to exhaust their opponents, whereas affected communities often lack the resources to sustain long court battles, increasing the risk of cases being dropped.
Moreover, fossil fuel companies have manipulated knowledge about climate change to influence public perception and policy debates in their favor. The industry has a long history of funding misinformation campaigns, including newspaper advertisements designed to cast doubt on the scientific consensus around climate change. One strategy has been to deliberately promote a narrative of scientific uncertainty, even as overwhelming evidence pointed to the growing climate crisis. Beyond media influence, fossil fuel corporations have also funded trade associations, think tanks, and academic institutions to shape research agendas and bolster industry-friendly messaging.
In Latin America, corporate capture in the oil sector allows economic elites to shape decision-making, prioritizing industry interests over human rights and environmental protection. This influence extends from securing licenses in conflict zones and weakening regulations to limiting oversight and community participation. Oil companies also fund research that legitimizes extraction while downplaying its risks. This control over information deepens asymmetries in litigation and broader policy discussions, reinforcing industry dominance and marginalizing alternative perspectives that challenge the sustainability of fossil fuel expansion.
How can research strengthen climate litigation?
Some of the most pressing research priorities in the field of climate litigation include advances in tracing climate impacts to specific sources, identifying health impacts from climate change, and quantifying the costs of climate impacts, along with mitigation and adaptation strategies. Plaintiffs also need more research that demonstrates specific harm resulting from climate change or the actions of governments and corporations. Integrating expertise from economics, law, social sciences and natural sciences would strengthen the foundations of climate litigation.
Closing the climate data gap between lower-income and higher-income regions is essential to ensure equitable access to scientific evidence. These gaps can be addressed through innovative approaches, including advanced statistical methods or comparative studies of regions with similar climatic conditions. Collective intelligence initiatives – collaborative efforts that harness diverse knowledge, technology, and citizen participation to solve complex problems – are emerging as a valuable tool, mobilizing citizens to generate localized climate data to fill gaps.
There is a valuable opportunity to strengthen traditional knowledge as evidence alongside scientific knowledge, particularly to address local knowledge gaps with region-specific insights. However, this requires ethical research practices that integrate multiple knowledge systems, avoiding the extractive models that still dominate in Latin America; in other words, where local communities receive little or no recognition or benefit from the use of their knowledge. Despite growing recognition of traditional knowledge, much research continues to undervalue local observations and reinforce academic power structures and perpetuating colonial patterns of knowledge production.
In Advisory Opinion OC-32/25, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights affirmed that the “right to science” encompasses access to culture as well as to local, traditional, and indigenous knowledge. The Court called for respectful and equitable dialogue between knowledge systems to co-produce climate knowledge, stressing that the outcomes of such dialogue should inform climate mitigation and adaptation decisions to ensure their sustainability and effectiveness, and to prevent cultural harm. It also highlighted good practices to support this approach, such as establishing and funding intercultural research centers.
Even when new research emerges, using it in courtrooms remains a challenge. The gap between the latest climate science and the evidence used in court shows the urgent need to improve legal practitioners’ access to up-to-date scientific information. A broader dissemination of existing data and tools beyond academia is crucial. Open-source resources, multilingual translations, specialized scientific training for lawyers and judges and clearer, more accessible language would help in bridging this gap. Advisory Opinion OC-32/25 outlines obligations for States to address these challenges, including the duty to produce accurate and relevant climate information, ensure that access to this information is affordable, effective, and timely, and adopt measures to counter disinformation on climate change.
Moving beyond carbon tunnel vision in litigation
Climate litigation in Latin America’s oil and gas sectors highlights the need for integrated approaches that connect climate, biodiversity, and human rights. Beyond climate science, further scientific development and innovative tools are required to attribute responsibility to these industries for biodiversity loss and its impact on human rights, with special attention to Indigenous rights.
The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, especially its ambitious goal to protect 30% of the planet by 2030, could be a game-changer for environmental litigation. Just as the Paris Agreement became a key legal tool in climate lawsuits, this new framework may pave the way for stronger legal cases connecting biodiversity loss and human rights. Scientists can play a key role in moving beyond carbon tunnel vision, which prioritizes carbon neutrality while neglecting other sustainability and development goals. Latin America, like other lower-income regions, has much to contribute to these discussions, offering important perspectives on how litigation can integrate climate, biodiversity, and human rights frameworks.