Announcing EnABLE: Environment And Biodiversity Law Education - Funded by the Darwin Initiative

We are very pleased to announce that our project proposal EnABLE has been selected for funding in Round 31 of the UK Biodiversity Funds Darwin Initiative.

Environmental law is central to biodiversity conservation, sustainable resource management and protecting human wellbeing. Operationalising legislation relies entirely on capable lawyers to forward cases, yet environmental law education is often absent or incomplete, and lawyers, prosecutors and judges are often ill-trained to meaningfully operationalise existing laws.

This project will empower law students, civil society and government lawyers in the Philippines to use existing laws to remedy environmental harm, developing a model that can be scaled globally and applied in different jurisdictions.

At the heart of the project is the creation of a globally-unique, practitioner-oriented, online Master Class for environmental lawyers, designed to help lawyers to use existing laws to secure remedies for harm to biodiversity and communities – including legal actions such as injunctions to stop harmful projects, restoration of harmed environments, and compensation for victims.

The project will be co-developed with the Lancaster Environment Centre in the UK, the Environmental Legal Assistance Center (ELAC) in the Philippines, the IUCN World Commission on Environmental Law Biodiversity Law Specialist Group, the Association of Law Students of the Philippines, and the Philippines Department of Justice.