New UK-funded projects on environmental law

Our team is pleased to be supporting two new, UK Governmented funded projects on envirionmetnal law:

Environment And Biodiversity Law Education (EnABLE)

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, funded by UK Biodiversity Funds Darwin Initiative, 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.

Making Indonesia’s new Conservation Law work against Illegal Wildlife Trade

We are supporting The Indonesian Center for Environmental Law (ICEL) in their new project “Making Indonesia’s new Conservation Law work against Illegal Wildlife Trade”, supported by the UK Government through the Illegal Wildlife Trade Challenge Fund.

Indonesia, one of the world's most biodiverse countries, remains a center of wildlife crime. Following a decade of negotiation, the country's main Conservation Law was finally revised in 2024. Among the revisions, Law No. 32 of 2024 now includes an important new provision: wildlife offenders can be ordered to pay compensation for causing environmental harm, with those funds used to reinvest into conservation. This is transformative, if the Law can be equitably and effectively operationalised. In partnership with Indonesia's Conservation Law Working Group (Pokja), the project will support the development of key implementing regulations to help guide government officials in applying the new Law, including in the use of the new remedy-oriented provision. The new guidelines will also be mainstreamed into training for judges and prosecutors. The team will also support champ

ion prosecutors in using this new provision for the first time.