Initiatives
Climate Change and Health

This webinar examines the intersection of climate change, health, and public international law, focusing on how legal frameworks address health vulnerabilities exacerbated by climate change. Grounded in contributions spanning diverse global contexts—such as informal labour in South Africa, the impacts of agrotoxins in Latin America, gendered disparities in rural India, and health inequalities in the UK—it sheds light on the structural inequalities and systemic challenges that deepen health disparities worldwide. Discussions will critically assess the political economy of global health in shaping climate governance, alongside the potential of human rights law to advance equity and resilience.
Building on themes explored in the digital symposium of the same title, Climate Change and Health: Mobilizing Public International Law into Action, this event reflects on COP29 outcomes, the evolving climate-health nexus within the UNFCCC, and the implications of the recent US notification to withdraw from the Paris Agreement and the World Health Organization. It offers a platform to analyse how international law can confront deeply entrenched inequalities and forge pathways toward more inclusive, justice-oriented climate-health strategies.
Organized by the Global Health and Human Rights Project at the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School, the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law and Max Planck Law (Initiatives on Law, Climate Change, and the Environment, and on Law, Health, and Life Sciences).
Register by 18 February, 23:59 CET to secure your spot. The access link to the event will be sent one day prior to the webinar.
Alicia Ely Yamin, JD, MPH, PhD, is a Lecturer on Law and the Director of the Global Health and Rights Project at the Petrie-Flom Centre for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics at Harvard Law School and an Adjunct Senior Lecturer on Health Policy and Management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, as well as a Visiting Professor of Law at the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Cecile de Villiers is a lecturer at the University of Cape Town and an admitted attorney of the High Court of South Africa. She holds an LLM and an LLD in labour law and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Stellenbosch University, South Africa.
Cristina Rosero Arteaga, a Colombian lawyer with a Master’s in Human Rights, is Senior Legal Advisor at the Center for Reproductive Rights, leading a project on reproductive health and agrochemical impacts. With nine years of experience in Latin America, she specialises in strategic litigation on sexual and reproductive rights and gender-based violence.
Nairita Roy Chaudhuri, PhD has a joint doctorate in Law and Development from Tilburg Law School, Tilburg University, and Faculty of Law, Oslo University, funded by the European Joint Doctorate in Law and Development program. In her transdisciplinary research titled ‘Enabling Limits: A Subaltern Theory of Transforming Boundary Struggles for Sustainable Climate Change Adaptation’, she explored the role of law in enabling subaltern communities to sustainably adapt to water scarcity and droughts under climate change, with a focus on gender relations.
Rossella De Falco is the Head of the Right to Health Campaign at Just Fair, a charity that works across the UK to promote economic, social and cultural rights. She holds a Ph.D. in Human Rights from the University of Padova, Italy, and an LL.M. in Economic, Social and Cultural Rights from the University of Essex.
Thalia Viveros Uehara, PhD, MSc, is a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law and a Postdoctoral Researcher at Tilburg Law School, Tilburg University. She is also a Project-Affiliated Researcher with the Petrie-Flom Centre for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics at Harvard Law School, as well as a Global Fellow at the Centre on Law and Social Transformation at the University of Bergen, Norway.
20 February 2025 | Climate Change and Health: Mobilizing Public International Law into Action
Find out more about the organizers of this event, the Max Planck Law Initiatives: Law, Climate Change, and the Environment and Law, Health, and Life Sciences
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