Should nature have rights?

Please join Legal Voices for the Future for our first January knowledge session, hosted in partnership with the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change & the Environment.

Flora Curtis, Vice Chair of the Legal Voices for the Future Stewardship Committee and barrister at FTB Chambers, will discuss the rights of nature movement, part of the wider earth law movement that seeks to put ecocentrism at the heart of environmental law. This session will be hosted by Joana Setzer, from the Grantham Research Institute. We will explore how modern environmental law has failed to make progress in preventing environmental degradation and will ask the question whether or not a radical shift in the way we relate to the environment is needed in order to prevent further deterioration.

Substantive presentation

The substantive presentation will consider the emergence of the modern rights of nature movement and will explore the ways in which rights of nature have been recognised by courts and states across the globe. It will also consider how the rights of nature movement might fit into the UK context.

Interview with an expert

This session will include a panel interview with the following guest practitioners and academics who will bring the topic of the presentation to life by discussing their own involvement in the domestic and international rights of nature movements:

• Paul Powlesland is a barrister and the co-founder of Lawyers for Nature. He regularly gives talks and workshops on the rights of nature, the relationship between the law and the natural world and what barristers and other lawyers should do in a time of climate and ecological emergency.
• Emma Montlake is the joint Executive Director of the Environmental Law Foundation and Head of Casework. Emma is a solicitor; passionate about nature and wildlife. Emma is a Director of Love Our Ouse, a CIC looking to play a pivotal role in the progress of the Rights of the River Ouse.
• Professor Jérémie Gilbert is a human rights scholar and activist who has extensively worked and published on the interaction between human rights law, ecological justice and the rights of nature. Jérémie regularly serves as a consultant for the United Nations, and as a legal expert, he has been involved in providing legal briefs, expert opinions, witness statements in several cases of litigation. He has recently led the establishment of the Interdisciplinary Network on the Rights of Nature.

How to attend

To join this event either in person or online please register in advance here.

If you are attending the in person event a map of the LSE Campus is available here.

Creative content

Each of our LVF’s monthly knowledge sessions will include a small group discussion of ‘creative content’. This might be a podcast, a piece of music or a film. The creative content for this session will be announced shortly and updated here soon.

About the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment
The Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment was established by the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2008 to create a world-leading multidisciplinary centre for policy-relevant research and training on climate change and the environment, bringing together international expertise from across LSE and beyond, including on economics, finance, geography, the environment, science, law, international relations, development and political science.

About Legal Voices for the Future
Legal Voices for the Future is a collaborative knowledge-sharing forum established by young practitioners from different fields of law, whose objective is to give voice to a new generation of lawyers. We do so by holding monthly knowledge sessions open to everyone – lawyers and non-lawyers alike. In order to bring fresh perspective, innovation and determination to pressing global issues such as climate change, each session is organised and led by a different member of Legal Voices for the Future. To find out more about Legal Voices for the Future, please visit: https://www.lawsociety.org.uk/topics/climate-change/legal-voices-for-the-future