This page provides information about events -- workshops and conferences -- that are being organized by member institutions of the IUCN Academy. These upcoming events focus on a range of issues of environmental law.

You will find below a list of events, meeting dates and location, agenda and registration material if available and a contact e-mail.
The Australian Environment & Planning Law Group of the Legal Practice Section will be conducting the Future of Environmental Law Symposium in Sydney on 25 November 2011. A copy of the registration brochure for this event is attached.

Online registration is available at here.

This year the Symposium will honour the contributions to the development of environmental law of three outstanding individuals.

Emeritus Professor Ben Boer and Professor Robert Fowler have made, and continue to make, significant contributions in both Australia and internationally to the study and teaching of environmental law. The Symposium will also acknowledge the contribution to environmental jurisprudence by the Hon Mahla Pearlman AO, former Chief Judge of the Land and Environment Court of NSW from 1992 to 2003.

The Symposium will have four sessions, each with two speakers addressing the topic for 30 minutes, followed by questions from the floor. The papers from the Symposium will be published, together with some further selected articles from contributors.

The title of the Symposium, "The Future of Environmental Law", is designed to provoke some discussion about the directions and value of environmental law in confronting the serious environmental problems facing us all. Next year, 2012, marks the 20th anniversary of the Rio Declaration and the 20th anniversary of the Framework Convention on Climate Change. It is appropriate to ask how far we have come since Rio and what the next 20 years holds for society and the planet.

The year 2012 marks a number of watershed points in international environmental affairs: The 40th anniversary of the adoption of the Stockholm Declaration, the 30th anniversary of the UN World Charter for Nature and the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the 25th anniversary of the Brundtland Report, and the 20th anniversary of both the Rio Declaration, Agenda 21, and the UNCED Conventions: the Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Convention on Biological Diversity.

In June 2012 world leaders will gather once again in Rio de Janeiro for the Earth Summit 2012 to secure renewed political commitment to the global agenda of sustainable development.

This is an appropriate point in time for reflection on the legal status of nature, how environmental goods and services are valued and taken into account in decision-making, and the implications of the rule of law in this respect.

While the rule of law generally is used with regard to citizens’ rights, this conference aims to explore the application of the rule of law to environmental protection, and its implications. How can the legal protection of the natural environment be strengthened? This also opens for reflections on the temporal and geographical extension of the rule of law.

The conference aims at analysing these basic issues of international and national environmental law and looking at new trends in this area of law.

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