Juan Auz Vaca

Bio

My name is Juan Auz, an Ecuadorian lawyer and a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Public Law & Governance Department at Tilburg Law School. I am also a PhD candidate at the Hertie School's Centre for Fundamental Rights in Berlin. Currently, I am working on transnational environmental litigation for the ERC-funded "Translitigate" project. Before this, I was an Alexander von Humboldt fellow at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). Previously, I worked for several years in Ecuador on indigenous peoples' rights in Amazonia as the co-founder of Terra Mater and Executive Director of Fundación Pachamama. I hold an LL.B. from Universidad de las Americas in Quito and an LL.M. in Global Environmental Law from the University of Edinburgh. I am a member of CIVICUS, the IUCN's World Commission on Environmental Law, the Global Network for the Study of Human Rights and the Environment and the European Society of International Law.

Expertise

My research lies at the intersection of the following fields of law: International Environmental Law, International Climate Law, International Human Rights Law, Comparative Constitutional Law, Legal Mobilization and the Climate Crisis, Law and Political Ecology, and Third-World Approaches to International Law.

I am a member of the following organizations:

• Climate Law Insider Editor for the ‘Carbon & Climate Law Review newsletter
• Advisory Council Member of the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law (ICNL)
• Legal Analyst at the University of Strathclyde’s Climate Change Litigation Initiative
• National Rapporteur for Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center's Peer Review Network of Climate Litigation
• Affiliate, NYU’s Climate Litigation Accelerator
• Member of the American and European Societies of International Law
• Member of Ecuador’s National Lawyers Forum
• Member of IUCN’s World Commission on Environmental Law (WCEL)
• Member of CIVICUS: World Alliance for Participation

Collaboration

I have collaborated with environmental and human rights NGOs coalitions in Latin America to bring climate change and environmental degradation issues before the Inter-American Human Rights System. 

Highlights

Selected publications:

• Two Reputed Allies: Reconciling Climate Justice and Litigation in the Global South, in Cesar Rodríguez-Garavito (ed), Litigating the Climate Emergency: How Human Rights, Courts, and Legal Mobilization Can Bolster Climate Action (Cambridge University Press, 2022).
• ‘So, this is Permanence’: The Inter-American Human Rights System as a Liminal Space for Climate Justice, Melbourne Journal of International Law, (2021) 22 (2).
• Human Rights-Based Climate Litigation: A Latin American Cartography, Journal of Human Rights and the Environment, (2022) 13(1).
• Situating the Inter-American Human Rights System in the Oscillation of International Law’ (2021) 2(1) Journal of Law and Political Economy, 94.
• The Climate Crisis and its Impacts on Human Rights: A Latin American Perspective, Justicia Ambiental, 11, 41-47, 2019. (In Spanish).
• Human Rights-Based Climate Litigation in Latin America, Oxford Human Rights Hub (14 April 2021)
• Global South climate litigation versus climate justice: duty of international cooperation as a remedy? Völkerrechtsblog, 28 April 2020.
• Climate Change Litigation and Human Rights: Pushing the Boundaries, Climate Law, special issue ‘implementing the Paris Agreement: Lessons from the Global Human Rights Regime; vol. 9 (3); 2019.
• Ecuador: 20 Years of Historical, Political and Normative Correspondences between Civil Society and the State. Gobernar: The Journal of Latin American Public Policy and Governance; vol. 2 (2); 2018. (In Spanish)
• The Environmental Law Dimensions of an International Binding Treaty on Business and Human Rights. Brazilian Journal of International Law; vol. 15 (2); Brazil – 2018.
• Rights of Nature in the Constitution: What are we talking about when we invoke the Rights of Nature in the last decade? From the trenches: Five critical essays on the fight for the defence of Human Rights in Ecuador in the previous decade. Rights and Justice Observatory. Quito –2017. (In Spanish)
• Human Rights Dimensions in Climate Change: Synergies and Caveats. Journal of the Universidad Catolica del Ecuador’s Law School. No. 1, pp. 127-1152. Quito – 2017.

Recent publications

1. The neocolonial violence of the 1.5°C threshold

   Auz Vaca, J. (Author), & Paiement, P. (Author). (2023). The neocolonial violence of the 1.5°C threshold. Web publication/site, Open Global Rights. https://www.openglobalrights.org/neocolonial-violence-1-5C-threshold/

2. Human rights-based climate litigation - A Latin American cartography

   Auz Vaca, J. (2022). Human rights-based climate litigation: A Latin American cartography. Journal of human rights and the environment, 13(1), 114-136.

3. Two reputed allies - Reconciling climate justice and litigation in th…

   Auz Vaca, J. (2022). Two reputed allies: Reconciling climate justice and litigation in the global south. In C. Rodríguez-Garavito (Ed.), Litigating the climate emergency (pp. 145-156). Cambridge University Press.

4. Situating the Inter-American Human Rights System in the oscillation o…

   Auz Vaca, J. (2021). Situating the Inter-American Human Rights System in the oscillation of international law. Journal of Law and Political Economy, 2(1), 94-113.

5. 'So, this is permanence' - The Inter-American Human Rights System as …

   Auz Vaca, J. (2021). 'So, this is permanence': The Inter-American Human Rights System as a liminal space for climate justice. Melbourne Journal of International Law, 22(2), 1-33. https://law.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0013/4126000/Auz.pdf