Participating in the IUCNAEL Colloquium (India 2024)

The 21st IUCN Academy of Environmental Law (AEL) Colloquium was hosted this year in July by the Gujarat National Law University situated in Gandhinagar (India). The theme of this year’s Colloquium was “Mission Life: Ensuring Environmental Sustainability and Climate Justice through Community Action”. IMEL was well represented at this year’s Colloquium. Associate Professor Melanie Murcott convened a special online panel on Climate Litigation in the Global South. The Panel was used to launch a special collection of papers published in the Journal of Human Rights Practice (2024), titled “Developments, Opportunities and Complexities in Global South Climate Litigation”. Those present on the panel explored the politics of knowledge production on climate change law and governance, and offered novel insights on challenges, opportunities, and complexities in Global South climate litigation. Professor Sandy Paterson was fortunate to be able to attend the Colloquium in person where he presented a paper titled “Learning from Protected Areas – Distilling Possible Lessons for Future OECM Regulation”. The paper explored the similarities and differences between protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs), and proposed an array of potential legal lessons that could be drawn from the former for the latter. These legal lessons focused on the role of law in regulating and facilitating: system planning and site selection; recognition and long-term security; governance diversity; management; monitoring and reporting; and financing and incentives.