This story is part of CRIN's new project: Children's Access to Environmental Justice. Learn more about the project here and read the Brazil report here

In this interview with Pedro Hartung, we hear about how the Alana Institute uses legal tools to address the fact that Brazilian children, and others in countries that have been historically colonised, are the most affected by climate injustice and violations due to lasting effects of colonial practice.

CRIN’s partner in Brazil, the Alana Institute runs a climate justice programme which aims to promote children's environmental and climate rights through legal advocacy work. 

CRIN: What is the situation on children’s environmental rights in Brazil? What are the key issues?

Pedro: In Brazil, we have very strong laws for children's environmental and climate rights, both in our Constitution and also our federal law. But right now with the current government, we have encountered obstacles when it comes to enforcing these laws. This is a key issue we are working on at Alana and with our partners. 

But more broadly speaking, the key issue to be aware of is the unbalanced dynamic between the Global North and the Global South. This dynamic has been established historically based on socio-economic exploitation and abuse of natural resources by countries from the global North, in former colonies of the Global South. This history has repercussions to this day, impacting the lives of millions of children. For example in Brazil, we know that the main actors violating children’s environmental rights are corporations from the Global North. These companies tend to use double standards when it comes to their policies related to air pollution, trash disposals and other environmental issues impacting children. They uphold high standards to protect children in their own countries, but they don’t apply the same standards to protect children in Latin America. An example of this is Euro6, which are emissions standards for heavy vehicles. While Mercedes and Volkswagen have been using Euro6 for more than a decade in Europe, in Brazil they are lobbying to prevent the adoption of the same less polluting technology.

So it is no coincidence that the children most affected by extreme weather events and their serious social environmental consequences are those in the global South, including Brazil. This is backed by UNICEF data, but we still need to work hard to bring this conversation into international policymaking spaces. Decision makers must address the lasting effects of colonial practice, and come up with responses that address and undo these. 

CRIN: How does your organisation use legal action to tackle these issues?

Pedro: The main tool that we are using right now is strategic litigation, especially within Brazil’s Supreme Court. For example, to address deforestation in the Amazon, we worked in coalition with other environmental protection organisations. Alana’s role was to bring children’s rights to the centre of the debate. So we framed the issue as a violation which impacts children’s rights across all of Brazil - not just the children in the affected areas - because deforestation affects air quality, and there are actually air quality standards which the government hasn’t been compliant with. In this way, we used the air quality problem to link the case about deforestation, wildfires and protection of Indigenous lands to the broader conversation of children’s rights. This approach allowed us to use an existing policy, so the air quality standard, to hold the government accountable.

Info box:  What is strategic litigation? 

Strategic litigation is an advocacy tool through which lawyers or organisations can raise an issue within a country’s justice system. The idea is to bring important and strategic cases to the courts, in order to:

1. Use a country’s existing laws and policies to hold those who are responsible for environmental issues accountable and demand justice.

2. Make the public and decision makers aware about important issues, through hearing about and following the legal processes of specific cases.

3. Use the outcome (bad or good) of court cases to either shed light on the laws and policies that aren’t adequately serving the best interest of the people and must be reformed or abolished, or to reiterate the importance of good environmental laws and policies which must be upheld.

Another legal approach we use is the ‘Amicus Brief’, which means that we can engage in an already existing court case as the friend of the court. In this way we can formally engage in a lawsuit, and bring new data and perspectives to the case. For example, we often use article 227, which is the article in Brazil’s Constitution which brings absolute priority to children's rights. By using this article when engaging with cases on environmental issues or climate issues, we are able to highlight the relevance and importance of children's rights. Recently when two very strong funds that had been secured to protect the Amazon and to develop local strategies for climate change mitigation were at threat of being abolished, we used article 227 to bring children’s rights at the centre of the debate and prevent them from being abolished. 

CRIN: What are some of the barriers/challenges you have faced when fighting for children's environmental justice in Brazil?

Pedro: The main barrier in Brazil, but also in other Latin American countries, is the time it takes to process a case in the judicial system. It can take more than five or even 10 years. But often we can’t afford to wait for a decision, especially when it comes to climate and environmental issues. So we need to find other ways to hold our state and foreign actors accountable.

Another barrier is the current government. When it comes to administrative cases, it's very difficult because the politics and the dynamics are very complex. This makes it difficult to fight for and secure good policies.

The last challenge is that in Brazil, children can not bring cases in their own names and interests to the court. In other countries like the United States, Germany or the United Kingdom, you see children bringing cases to court. But in Brazil this is not possible, because the law requires that a child needs to be represented by a family member to file a lawsuit. So we are trying to find ways around this so children can be heard more in court. For example, we make sure that in our documents and contributions, even in our lawsuits, we include children’s voices. We hear their views not just through focus group research, but we listen to children in different ways. For example we work with journalists who involve children for specific cases, or we work with educators who encourage children to express themselves in different ways like drawings or building sculptures. We are about to release a very interesting debate on how to engage children in a more sensible way. 

CRIN: What actions do you plan to take moving forward?

Pedro: We have two main goals right now. One is to bring accountability to corporations. We believe corporations are a huge part of the problem right now, when it comes to environmental and climate issues, especially here in Brazil, Latin America and the Global South. With many corporations from the Global North operating in the Global South, there is an imbalanced dynamic, and our main focus is to call for accountability for this new type of colonialism.

Our second goal is to convey to the world the idea that our natural resources are part of our cultural identity, especially for Indigenous communities. So what we’re fighting for is not just natural resources or economic development. We are talking about cultural identity and heritage, and children’s rights to them. In the Amazon, for instance, 12,000 years ago we had very complex communities, and more recently before European Colonisation with over 5,000 people and strong political dynamics. We had our own way to relate to nature in a very sustainable way. There is research that shows that these Indigenous communities established very interesting ways to live in balance with nature. People had a cultural bond with nature. This kind of cultural heritage isn’t available for children to read about in books. It is a history based on practices inside the forest. The forests are our monuments, the trees that were planted by those Indigenous communities are our pyramids, our temples. They are our ecological past and present that we need to preserve, in order to preserve the cultural heritage of our ancestors who were here before the Europeans came and violently brought with them other ways to relate to nature. 

CRIN: What message do you have for organisers in other countries? How should they connect with your work in Brazil?

Pedro: One thing that we learned is that environmental and climate issues have no borders. We are all interconnected, so we need to find ways to work together. At the moment, organisations and activists from the Global South hold less power in the spaces where climate decisions are being made. These spaces tend to benefit the Global North. Through forming coalitions we can work together to negotiate and advocate better, and bring more financial support for those most affected by the climate crisis. 

For example in Brazil, the Alana Institute is a part of Laclima, a network of Latin American organisations who come together to carry out strategic litigation. We’ve just launched a repository of lawsuits here in Latin America. So organisations in other countries can find inspiration and legal strategies to use in their own countries. The idea is to really grow this coalition, so that we can work together against corporations that are causing damage to the environment all around the world.

We need to work together and see the common agenda, see that we are suffering from the same problem. This is a pattern. So let's find ways to tackle that, and hold the states and corporations accountable.

This story is part of CRIN's new project: Children's Access to Environmental Justice. Learn more about the project here and read the Brazil report here.

Sign up to our newsletter to stay updated and follow the project on Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram.