Speaker: Sumudu Atapattu, teaching professor and director of the Global Legal Studies Center, University of Wisconsin–Madison Law School
In July 2025, the International Court of Justice delivered the long-awaited advisory opinion on climate change. In a groundbreaking opinion, the court endorsed the obligation of states to protect the climate system and people from adverse consequences of climate change and pointed out that the failure of states to take appropriate action to protect the climate system from greenhouse gas emissions including through fossil fuel production, consumption, granting of licenses and subsidies, may constitute an internationally wrongful act. The court also endorsed a human right to a healthy environment. In this presentation, Atapattu looks at the implications of the advisory opinion.
About the Speaker
Sumudu Atapattu, LLM, PhD (Cambridge), attorney-at-law (Sri Lanka), is a teaching professor and director of the Global Legal Studies Center at University of Wisconsin Law School. She is affiliated with UW-Madison’s Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, Global Health Institute, and the Center for South Asia, and is the executive director of the Human Rights Program. She has published widely on climate change and human rights, international environmental law, and environmental justice and climate migration.