Essay by Eric Worrall
“The Inter-American Court … requires … joint production of climate knowledge between scientists and the custodians of such knowledge’ …”
In 2025 I wrote an article about how the Inter-American court ruled the USA has an obligation to fund climate science.
But I clearly missed the entertaining part.
July 21, 2026
International Courts Against the Defunding of Climate Science? Revisiting the ICJ’s Climate Change Advisory Opinion
Written by Anna Saunders
Introduction
The first eighteen months of the second Trump administration have witnessed a sustained assault on scientific infrastructures enabling understanding of anthropogenic climate change. This has taken the form of cuts to national science agencies; freezes and dramatic reductions in grants to universities; and attempts to dismantle observation arrays and crucial monitoring stations. It has also extended to research jointly conducted with partners in other states, who have received questionnairesrequiring them to disclose whether their work involves ‘climate’ or ‘environmental justice’. Environmental Protection Agency head Lee Zeldin has described the goal of the administration as ‘driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion’.
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Obligations to ‘actively pursue’ science as a corollary of prevention
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Best available science informs the conduct to be undertaken in performance of the obligation of prevention, which ‘may … become more demanding in the light of new scientific and technological knowledge’ (at [284]). As Katalin Sulyok has observed, scientific knowledge, and the work of the IPCC, also played a ‘central role … in how the Court made legal sense of the climate crisis’, and in the newly reiterated legal significance of the 1.5C temperature goal. Given this centrality, it is in retrospect not entirely surprising that the Court would pronounce on obligations on states to produce climate science, as well as to attend to its consequences.
…Here, the Opinion of the Inter-American Court on Climate Emergency and Human Rights offers a significant contrast. Like the ICJ, the Inter-American Court extended existing obligations in respect of science to the climate situation, stating that states must ‘encourage the development of science in relation to key aspects of the climate emergency’ (at [474]). In doing so, the Inter-American Court recognised the specifically plural nature of this obligation, since ‘scientific knowledge coexists with other forms of knowledge, such as local, traditional and indigenous knowledge’ (at [476]). The Inter-American Court also recognised the particular role of Indigenous women in ‘preserving and transmitting’ these forms of knowledge (at [482]). Significantly for the interpretation of the obligation of prevention, it found that the procedural dimension of the right requires ‘integration of the best available science with local, traditional and indigenous knowledge, and … the joint production of climate knowledge between scientists and the custodians of such knowledge’ (emphasis added, at [480]).
Read more: https://www.ejiltalk.org/international-courts-against-the-defunding-of-climate-science-revisiting-the-icjs-advisory-opinion-on-climate-change/
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I’ve written to President Trump asking for his response to this claim he has an international legal obligation to fund climate science to be jointly produced with custodians of traditional or indigenous knowledge, I’ll let you all know if I receive a reply.
Obviously some adaption to current climate science processes will be required to embrace this obligation. Space will need to be allocated in research establishments for any ritual observances required to produce climate science. I see a great opportunity for alarmist climate scientists to explore other belief systems. And if this obligation is enforced in any form, I’m sure looking forward to reporting the outcome of that joint production of scientific product.
