'SO, THIS IS PERMANENCE': THE INTER-AMERICAN HUMAN RIGHTS SYSTEM AS A LIMINAL SPACE FOR CLIMATE JUSTICE.

This paper aims to appraise the normative potential of the Inter-American Human Rights System ('IAHRS') to respond to the threats posed to the enjoyment of human rights in the face of the climate crisis. In so doing, the paper contrasts broader critical International Human Rights and Environmental Law ('IHREL') scholarship with the IAHRS innovative norms, thereby highlighting its opportunities and shortcomings. As a heuristic tool, the paper employs the analogy of international law as a continuum that constantly oscillates to distribute said scholarly views. These views are clustered between a spectrum that goes from the Baroque ethos to the Realist ethos, two categories borrowed from critical theorist Bolívar Echeverría. The former contends that the emergence and application of IHREL encompass a structural legitimacy deficit because of its colonial and liberal underpinnings and operation, rendering the solutions for tackling global challenges, such as the climate crisis, ineffective. The latter attitude responds to these critiques by referencing the historical victories of rights movements that tactically mobilised the law to change oppressive patterns. This paper puts forward a third situated description by utilising the case of the IAHRS to frame it as an appropriate 'space' of political and legal contention that promises to address some of the shortcomings of IHREL. However, it asserts that the IAHRS, despite constituting pathbreaking legal tools, still fails to meet the tenets of climate justice. The paper is composed of three parts. First, it will lay bare the most salient critiques and defences of IHREL. Secondly, it will highlight the progressive legal production of the IAHRS in the areas of socio-economic and indigenous peoples' rights to respond to critical scholars. Thirdly, it will juxtapose the climate crisis context with the IAHRS's normative edifice to make the case for its permanence as a liminal space between two ethe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]