Breathing unequally: Climate justice and the right to health

Climate change is increasingly recognised as a public health emergency, disproportionately affecting vulnerable populations. Legal frameworks often fail to address the intersection of climate justice and the right to health, particularly in the Global South. This paper examines how climate-related environmental degradation exacerbates health inequalities and challenges the adequacy of existing legal protections. This paper employs a critical doctrinal methodology drawing on constitutional provisions, international treaties, judicial decisions, and interdisciplinary scholarship. Consistent with the conventions of normative legal research assessed by analytical coherence rather than empirical reproducibility the methodology is analytical and interpretive. Jurisdictions were selected purposively to capture variation in constitutional framework, degree of judicial innovation, and climate vulnerability. Legal and institutional mechanisms both domestic and international lack the coherence, enforcement capacity, and equity orientation needed to address climate-related health harms. Fragmentation of legal regimes, procedural tokenism, regulatory capture, and inadequate adaptation financing deepen the vulnerability of marginalised communities. Existing rights-based approaches fail to integrate the ecological dimensions of health or engage with proportionality reasoning adequate to climate-health obligations. The paper argues for reconceptualising the right to health as climate-resilient, participatory, and ecologically grounded. Strengthening judicial innovation, transnational constitutional borrowing, and community-based legal empowerment are vital. A constitutionally rooted and globally informed framework for climate-health justice is essential to protect both people and the planet.