Conservation Litigation partner ICEL presents at Earthrights and UNEP Report Launch
A CL Network Contribution
The event was hosted online on 25 January 2024 and was led by Lead Author Willian Schulte (ELAW), with additional contributions from Georgina Lloyd (UNEP), Jinmei Liu (Friends of Nature), and Kornkanok Wathanabhoom and Ben Hardman (Earthrights International).
ICEL – the Indonesian Center for Environmental Law, and a key member of the Conservation Litigation network - last month presented at a Forum to mark the launch of an important report on environmental litigation and rights in Southeast Asia.
The report, entitled “Enhancing the Role of Environmental Public Interest Litigation to Advance Environmental Rights in Southeast Asia” and published by EarthRights International with support from the UN Environment Programme, seeks to present the benefits, challenges and latest developments of environmental public interest litigation in Southeast Asia.
Speaking at the event, Grita Anindarini from the Indonesian Center for Environmental Law, a key member of the CL network, delivered the latest developments from recent environmental liability cases in Indonesia, highlighting the challenges faced and the important initiatives being undertaken to overcome them and to advance environmental litigation in the future.
One of these strategies draws directly on the work of Conservation-Litigation.org: during her presentation, Ms. Anindarini highlighted how shifting the focus of environmental litigation from mere monetary compensation to restorative remedies for biodiversity could represent a potentially transformative response to the current triple planetary crisis.
“As the post-2020 global biodiversity agenda emphasises the importance not only of conserving biodiversity but also restoring it, it is time we optimize litigation not only to punish but also to heal the damage,” emphasised Ms. Anindarini. “As Southeast Asia is a major biodiversity hotspot, this is a promising strategy to be explored in the region”, she concluded.
Partly funded by the UK Government through the Illegal Wildlife Trade Challenge Fund, part of the UK Biodiversity Challenge Funds