Comunidad aborigen de Santuario de Tres Pozos et al v. Jujuy Province

On July 12, 2023, several Indigenous Communities and an ENGO (Fundación Ambiente y Recursos Naturales – FARN) filed a claim before the Superior Tribunal of Justice of the Jujuy Province challenging the constitutionality of the new provincial constitution. The claim involved several arguments, some of them are environmental and one is climatic. Among others, the plaintiffs alleged the breach of the right of the Indigenous Communities to free, prior and informed consent, the right to access information, the right of human rights defenders in environmental matters, the non-regression principle as contained in the Escazú Agreement and the infringement of international and national environmental provisions. Regarding this last argument and particularly climate concerns, the plaintiffs observed that Jujuy is home to (high-Andean) wetlands (salt pans, salt flats, lagoons, meadows) that provide a range of key environmental benefits, such as climate mitigation and adaptation, and that those ecosystems are threatened by the impacts of climate change and human activities with high impact, including the increasing lithium mining. In this context, the plaintiffs argued, there is a need to develop a sound protection of these ecosystems that includes an intergenerational approach and the rights of the future generation. This protection is, however, according to the plaintiffs, disregarded by the new constitutional text that regulates these ecosystems mainly as objects of exploitation and production. In this sense, the new constitutional text would not engage with the National Climate Change Act, nor with the NDC or the National Long-Term Strategy. Particularly, the provincial constitutional text would breach the principle of priority introduced by the National Climate Change Act and that establishes that adaptation and mitigation policies must prioritize the needs of vulnerable groups in the context of climate change (Art. 4.c Act 27.520).