Latest NewsNews
Post-Colloquium Side Event in Australia July 1-6, 2013
An exciting opportunity to strengthen environmental law collegial links with Australia and New Zealand
Colleagues coming to Waikato for the 2013 IUCN Academy of Environmental Law Colloquium may enjoy the opportunity to strengthen links with fellow environmental lawyers in Australia while exploring a selection of urban, coastal and rural landscapes. An exciting post-Colloquium programme, designed to stimulate collaboration and to give colleagues ‘a taste of Australia’ has been designed.
As many Colloquium attendees will be passing through Sydney on their return journey from New Zealand, we have organised a programme to capitalise on this. Delegates will participate in a full day field trip to the University of Western Sydney where peri-urban environmental issues are a focus and this will be followed by a Reception and Panel Discussion back in Sydney City with colleagues from the University of Technology Sydney. Delegates will then have the opportunity to see some of Australia’s fabulous coastline, with a bus tour to the University of New England in Armidale via Port Macquarie. We will also travel via Dorrigo where environmental land use conflict issues have emerged in recent times. Along the way, there will be opportunities to witness stunning scenery, and to interact further with colleagues. Following our arrival in Armidale, delegates will participate in a two-day symposium on land use change law and policy.
The Australian Side Event organizers look forward to a leisurely and enjoyable opportunity to build on the collegial links which will be created and strengthened by your attendance at Waikato.
For more detailed programme information, and online registration, please visit: www.une.edu.au/aglaw/environmentallawsymposium/ or email Amanda Kennedy: amanda.kennedy@une.edu.au
Draft Program
11th IUCN Academy Colloquium to be held in New Zealand at the University of Waikato June 24 – 29, 2013
He Tapuwae: footprints left on the land, symbolizes the human journey into new territory as we explore and develop our world. This Colloquium will therefore focus on key emerging themes of international, comparative and domestic environmental law and our journey in responding to them. The experience of low lying coast and island communities, for example, reflects the fact that at the heart of environmental pressures and conflicts lie frequently fractious relationships and interactions between power and vulnerability. All around the world, there are deep tensions, frequently, between vastly different understandings of how to live as human beings in the complex ecologies in which we find ourselves and with which we are co-formed.Local and traditional communities across the world share multiple forms of environmental vulnerability. Indigenous peoples in the critically endangered forests; communities suffering from the effects of irresponsible mining or hazardous wastes; subsistence farmers whose resources are degraded or appropriated without fair recompense. A wide range of human communities suffer from forms of deep environmental injustice in the name of 'business as usual'. Meanwhile, innumerable predations affect animal populations and the fragile ecosystems upon which all life on earth depends.
Those who depend most intimately and directly upon the living world for their physical and cultural existence tend to suffer most from environmental destruction and degradation. While all of human life depends upon the living world, communities vulnerable to the socio-cultural effects of environmental degradation suffer particular and well-documented forms of environmental injustice, exclusion and marginalisation. This IUCN Academy Colloquium invites participants to address this challenge and the various ways in which law could more effectively 'speak truth to power'.
Our hope, as organisers, is that members of the Academy will contribute to a critique of environmental injustice and offer 'sacred footsteps' into new frontiers of environmental justice. We hope for fresh jurisprudential, doctrinal, institutional and tactical insights, and practical mechanisms for the delivery of resilience to vulnerable communities, animals and ecosystems.
For further details, please visit the website of the University of Waikato. Once we have further information on the Colloquium, we will update our website accordingly.
Draft Program for Waikato Colloquium
The Draft Program is now available. For further details, please visit the website of the University of Waikato. Once we have further information on the Colloquium, we will update our website accordingly.
New Institutional Members
The Academy has the pleasure of announcing and welcoming Florida A&M College of Law (USA), University of Malawi (Malawi), Environment-People-Law (Ukraine), University of Idaho College of Law (USA) and Biosphere Group, Think Tank on Sustainable Futures Research (Peru) as our new members. You can find a list of all member institutions and details about each institution under "Our Members".
Fellows of the IUCN Academy of Environmental Law
The IUCN Academy of Environmental Law is pleased to recognize a number of internationally-renowned leaders in the field of environmental law as Fellows of the IUCN Academy.
Fellows of the IUCN Academy are nominated on the basis of “exceptional service in the field of environmental law, over an extended period.” In awarding the designation of Fellow, the Academy takes into account contributions in such areas as environmental law teaching and scholarly research, environmental law practice, or service to the field of environmental law in a judicial or administrative capacity or in the provision of community‐based services, including work in non‐governmental agencies. A candidate’s service to the field of environmental law may be focused on the international, regional, national or local levels. This is the first time that the Academy has conferred this recognition.
Read more: Fellows of the IUCN Academy of Environmental Law
IUCN Academy was featured in the International Innovation Magazine
The IUCN Academy was featured in the October 2012 North America issue of the International Innovation Magazine. Click here to download the article.
2012 Environmental Law Scholarship Awards
The IUCN Academy of Environmental Law scholarship awards were presented at the 10th annual colloquium held in Baltimore, Maryland, July 1-5, 2012.
The prizes are awarded in two categories on the basis of scholarship, defined primarily to include published research such as academic books (edited or authored), journal articles and book chapters, as well as commissioned policy reports and other research studies .
The 2012 winner in the first category, namely a scholar with less than 10 years academic experience, is Dr. Margaret A. Young from Melbourne Law School. Her reviewers stated the following about her achievements:
“Margaret Young’s key contribution to scholarship on environmental law is her book Trading Fish, Saving Fish: The Interaction between Regimes in International Law (Cambridge UP, 2011). The book makes a significant contribution to our understanding of international environmental regimes and in particular to the interaction between regimes. It is a beautifully written work based on extremely thorough research which effectively opens a new area of scholarship. While there has been some discussion of regime interaction prior to this book, Young’s work proposes a novel and potentially very useful framework for regime interaction. Anyone interested in the issues of fragmentation, coherence and interaction in international law must read this book.”
In the second category, for scholars with more than ten years of academic experience, the Academy presented awards to two scholars who have influenced scholarship in different regions of the world and in different languages.
Reviewers of the first recipient, Professor Benjamin J. Richardson of the University of British Colombia, Canada stated:
“Professor Richardson is an inspiring, outstanding and leading environmental law scholar who has significantly contributed over the past few years to the environmental and corporate law discourse at national, regional and international levels. The intellectual depth and influence of Professor Richardson's scholarship and his work on the balancing necessary between economic growth, social development and the protection of the natural resource base have been discussed and verified by means of several excellent reviews of his publications, notably Socially Responsible Investment Law (Oxford UP, 2008), various research awards and scholarships as well as professional distinctions such as his appointment as a Senior Canada Research Chair in 2010 and Distinguished Visiting Researcher at the University of Technology Sydney (Faculty of Law) in Australia in 2012.”
Justice Antonio Benjamin of the High Court of Brazil was awarded the second senior scholarship prize for 2012. As one of his reviewers explains, his scholarship has significantly influenced the content of Brazilian environmental law. In addition, he has developed environmental law through his legal rulings, such as the recent decision that incorporated the principle of non-regression into Brazilian law for the first time. He has influenced a generation of environmental law scholars. To quote one of his reviewers: “it is rare to find an environmental law book, article or judgement that does not have a citiation for at least one of Professor Benjamin’s works between 2007-2011. That is illustrative of the high quality of his published work and of its strong influence on the majority of related scholarly work developed in Brazil.”
Justice Benjamin’s scholarship has a particular resonance for those who study the experiences of the global South. In writing about Brazilian water law and policy, for example, he adopts an historical approach that recognises how the colonial legacy has influenced current patterns of water use and resource exploitation and proposes alternatives to the status quo.
Page 1 of 8
