Greenpeace v. Mexico (on the Climate Change Fund)

The General Law on Climate Change in Mexico was issued in 2012. This law contemplated the Climate Change Fund, a public trust fund created to increase the existing resources to address climate change. According to article 80 of the Law, it had the objective of attracting and channeling public, private, national, and international financial resources to support the implementation of actions to address climate change. However, in 2020 the Mexican Congress reformed the Law and eliminated the Climate Change Fund. On November 30, 2020, Greenpeace Mexico filed a lawsuit against these amendments, arguing that they violated the constitutional right to a healthy environment. On March 30, 2023, the District Court dismissed the case, deciding that the plaintiff did not have standing because the amendments did not impact them, considering that Greenpeace did not prove that it was beneficiary of the Climate Change Fund or that it had an application in process to access the Climate Change Fund’s resources. On April 17, 2023, the plaintiff appealed the decision. The Collegiate Court reversed the District Court’s decision, deciding that Greenpeace did have standing to sue, due to their scientific work in defense of the environment. Then, they asked the Supreme Court to decide the case on the merits. The Supreme Court ruled on the merits of the case and determined that the extinction of the Climate Change Fund constitutes a regressive measure that affects the right to a healthy environment and reduced the level of protection that had been achieved to protect it. It decided that the amendments violate the right to a healthy environment because they eliminated the general rules that existed to regulate the financing, evaluation and oversight of projects and programs to address climate change, which affected principles such as efficiency, transparency and honesty in the use of the public budget. In addition, it decided that the legislator did not adequately justify the disappearance of the Fund. Accordingly, the Supreme Court granted the relief so that the amendments could not be applied, neither now nor in the future, in proceedings in which the NGO seeks access to public funds intended to mitigate the effects of climate change, including trusts or other similar instruments.