Lawyers Against Poverty (LAP), Simmons & Simmons, The Alliance for Lawyers at Risk, Action4Justice and Peace Brigades International UK are pleased to launch a new Legal Empowerment project designed to bridge the gap between grassroots human, environmental and climate justice movements and the international legal community, in order to build coordinated and multidisciplinary approaches to global environmental issues.

Through this work, we aim to build a new international legal network that will build stronger, more diverse and multidisciplinary approaches to the prevention of business and State-led human and environmental rights abuses, rooted in community knowledge and vision, and in collaboration with those with the best access to legal opportunities and international mechanisms.

At the launch event, attendees were shown an exclusive screening of “In Defense of our Lands”, featuring the courageous fight of Latin American environmental defenders to protect their water supplies and natural resources followed by a Q&A discussion, chaired by Ali Crosthwaite from Simmons & Simmons, to learn more about how threats posed by climate change can be seen as a human rights issue, and how evolving environmental legal precedents globally are expanding the scope of environmental law to include our collective duty to protect planet earth and to hold governments and corporations to account.

The panel also discussed the role that the legal community can play in exploring innovative solutions across jurisdictions jointly with grassroots environmental defenders, how international lawyers can get involved, actively widen access to international and regional legal protection frameworks, address the implementation gaps and enable potential systemic changes, and how the rapid transfer of legal knowledge and strategies should be seen as a must in light of the increasing urgency of the climate crisis.

Meet our panellists:

Richard Lord QC, Action4Justice

Shubha Srinivasan, Presenting Unit at Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC)

Lucy Claridge, Forest Peoples Programme (FPP)

Emma Lough, Lawyers Against Poverty (LAP)

More about this project

As world leaders prepare for the upcoming UN Climate Change Conference, which aims to accelerate action to-wards the goals of the Paris Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, civil society is gearing up to ensure the human and environmental rights agreements and decisions made are implemented. This is a critical time for climate and environmental discussions and solutions, as opportunities for grassroots movements to hold corporations and States accountable continue to emerge.

Human and environmental rights defenders are on the front-line of global efforts to halt widespread and disastrous human rights abuses and environmental destruction, at the intersection of human, environmental, and climate justice. In peacefully exercising and defending environmental, territory and land rights, and speaking out when these rights are threatened: such as when pollution from mining and oil threatens to seep into the land and water, or communities are forced from their land for development projects or monoculture plantations, they are actively fighting climate breakdown and making lasting changes to ensure the health and happiness of humanity.

Human and environmental rights defenders are part of the solution. They are the ones legally challenging injustices in high-risk environments, frequently without the sustained support of legal experts or the broader international legal community. They are bringing cases that could create structural changes at the national and international level. However, all too often, short term gains come at the cost of long-term strategic approaches, because the consolidation of knowledge has been limited by the ad-hoc nature of defenders’ interactions, and their lack of access to the legal and financial resources and mechanisms that international lawyers are privilege to.

As more and more communities throughout the world take up the fight for their rights and the protection of the Earth, how can we guarantee the global support of those who believe in their cause? How can we ensure that the international legal community have access to the invaluable knowledge and expertise of communities at the grassroots? And how can we ensure that the defenders have access to the opportunities and mechanisms of the international community?

This project aims to support a global community of defenders across four continents, creating collaborative learning spaces so they can connect, share insights, test strategies, and increase their impact. Through a global network of legal empowerment hubs, we will embed practical strategies in communities by harnessing the power of the law to existing grassroots movements. Crucially, defenders will also be able to locate peers who have experienced similar issues, draw on expertise from around the world, and cooperate on solutions to local issues. Through this networked approach, we aim create a horizontal dialogue that connects human, environmental, and climate justice movements, victims of abuses, and lawyers around the world, to provide critically needed peer-to-peer support.