Publications
Environmental liability litigation could remedy biodiversity loss
Article in the journal Conservation Letters that describes the potential for conservation litigation in countries around the world - as a novel strategy to help protect and remedy biodiversity. We propose a simplified framework for developing conservation lawsuits across countries and contexts.
Poacher pays? Judges' liability decisions in a mock trial about environmental harm
This article explores judge's views of conservation litigation cases. Drawing on mock trials and interviews with Indonesian judges, the article highlights a favourable setting for testing real-world court cases.
Pioneering civil lawsuits for harm to threatened species: A guide to claims with examples from Indonesia
This report provides a step-by-step exploration of how to use a country's liability provisions to develop meaningful lawsuits in cases of harm to threatened species. Drawing on Indonesian examples, the guide is the first of its kind to explain how to develop these types of cases .
Policy Brief: Civil lawsuits - A novel response to illegal wildlife trade
This Policy Brief highlights how pioneering a new use of environmental liability - to remedy harm to biodiversity from illegal wildlife trade (IWT) – could provide important new protections for threatened species. Unlike traditional approaches that focus on punishing parties responsible for environmental harm, this strategy refocuses efforts onto remedying the social, economic and environmental harm caused by IWT. Many countries have enabling legislation that allow such lawsuits, although they are not yet commonly used against IWT. The Policy Brief highlights what could be done to pioneer conservation litigation for threatened species. For more information, explore “Pioneering Civil Lawsuits for Harm to Threatened Species: A guide to claims with examples from Indonesia”.
Liability for Environmental Harm as a Response to the Anthropocene
The Anthropocene is often framed in terms of understanding and mitigating large-scale human-induced environmental change. However, facing unprecedented planetary transformations, the differentiated impacts that global environmental change has across communities, species, time and place must not only be considered and characterised, but actively remedied. Instruments that help reconcile related inequities and facilitate our daily existence within injured environments are also essential. We argue that ‘liability for environmental harm’ provides a critical, if under-utilised and challenging, legal response to the Anthropocene.
Tropical Conservation and Liability for Environmental Harm
Tropical countries face a host of challenges to their natural environment and resources. Environmental law liability provisions offer one set of potential protections. This Article surveys such provisions in a variety of tropical country contexts. Of the seven countries studied, spanning a range of legal systems and economic development and environmental governance performance, all but one have the authority to bring liability claims for harms to the environment. However, a variety of impediments to effective implementation have resulted in a limited number of cases being resolved, and frequently with low damage awards relative to the injuries. The authors offer a range of recommendations for improving the effectiveness of the drafting and implementation of liability provisions to promote environmental protection.
Training PowerPoint slides_Pioneering conservation litigation for threatened species
These slides provide an introduction to Conservation Litigation for a broad audience, ranging from conservationists to law students to judges.
Environmental liability: A missing use for ecosystem services valuation
The PNAS 100th Anniversary Special Feature on natural capital and ecosystem services highlights a range of opportunities and challenges to operationalize these concepts to strengthen environmental governance. However, the issue’s focus is largely on the role these concepts play in ex ante decision-making, and overlooks their role in informing courtroom liability suits for ex post environmental damages.
The role of ecosystem services in USA natural resource liability litigation
This paper examines how the United States has valued harm to public resources in natural resource liability laws and practice, an early legal application of the ecosystem-services conceptual framework. Our primary focus is on valuing harm to the difficult-to-value resources and ecological services that provide indirect or passive human uses. We focused on the use habitat equivalency analysis (HEA), a service-to-service approach, widely used in the U.S. and EU, that may be useful for other countries.