The Environment

Key tasks for these sessions will be to articulate the narrative regarding justice and its relationship to other outcomes to support future advocacy, developing strategies for promoting key messages and themes in important venues and communities, articulating metrics for measuring progress, and defining what success will look like. 

Working Sessions are concurrent workshops, interactive dialogues and facilitated discussions hosted by a variety of Hague-based institutions around pressing issues and opportunities related to the Forum’s theme of “Realizing Justice for All.” 

Working Sessions are concurrent workshops, interactive dialogues and facilitated discussions hosted by a wide variety of global and local institutions around pressing issues and opportunities related to the Forum’s theme of “Realizing Justice for All.” 

Participants will learn from justice sector case studies, movements in other sectors, and communications experts how to better understand, practice, and deploy the wide range of communications tools and techniques available to achieve their messaging goals.

Working Sessions are concurrent workshops, interactive dialogues and facilitated discussions hosted by a wide variety of global and local institutions around pressing issues and opportunities related to the Forum’s theme of “Realizing Justice for All.” 

Working Sessions are concurrent workshops, interactive dialogues and facilitated discussions hosted by a wide variety of global and local institutions around pressing issues and opportunities related to the Forum’s theme of “Realizing Justice for All.”

How does the implementation and enforcement of environmental laws address the severe health effects of environmental pollution? This session explored current laws and standards, and outlined how efforts to train lawyers and judges in various countries have helped bridge the gaps between laws and health outcomes for affected populations. Speakers highlighted the importance of empowering local populations through environmental litigation, and emphasized the need to build tools and skills that can be transferred, such as learning to collect information and document health harms, legal education, and legal assistance and council. International training of lawyers in environmental law was also flagged as an important practice, particularly for private legal practitioners, who have been excluded in the past. Speakers also highlighted the significant work that must be done to establish environmental protection as a fundamental right, and to broaden the development community’s appreciation of the impact of law and justice on human development.

Read the full summary for this working session. 

This working session focused on how civil society can undertake investigations of transnational crimes to
collect evidence and press governments to take action. The Wildlife Justice Commission (WJC) discussed
civil society’s role in bridging the enforcement gap when intergovernmental or governmental approaches
fail to address pressing issues. Specifically, the WJC presented its approach to the lack of enforcement of
laws related to wildlife crime and the urgent need to acknowledge it as transnational organized crime. The
WJC presented its intelligence-led approach to investigations and the role of public hearings as the ultimate
means to generate government accountability if all else fails. The Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF)
presented its approach documenting illegal fishing through film-led investigations to bring about
government enforcement. These approaches are essential to fill gaps left by a lack of enforcement of laws
against illegal fishing. During the session, both organizations highlighted the fact that without government
action, durable reform is not possible. Therefore influencing government strategies and priorities is crucial. 

Read the full summary for this working session. 

During this session, the presenters discussed the use of international agreements to advance
environmental justice in Europe and Central Asia and in Latin America and the Caribbean. The Aarhus
Convention came into effect in 2001, and specifically applies to the 40 countries. It is not an environmental
treaty per se, and does not provide classic environmental protection because it does not protect a
particular part of the environment. Instead, it links procedural rights to a human right. The Escazú
Agreement was signed in March 2018 after a six-year negotiation process. This agreement specifically
applies to Latin America and the Caribbean, where conflicts over natural resources are increasing. Four
environmental defenders are killed every week, which is part of the reason for creating the agreement. The
agreement intends to increase the number of national laws addressing matters regarding environmental
protection. Participants explored challenges with these two agreements, including implementation gaps
and a potential excess of agreements, but also opportunities, such as expansion of a similar agreement to
Africa. 

Read the full summary for this working session. 

This session focused on storytelling, narrative, and solutions-based approaches to thinking about cultural change. Narrative frames such as public narrative, the theory of narrative arc in social movements, and audience theory were introduced and applied as tools to real-life case studies, with a focus on the environment and how the story of climate change has evolved over time. The session highlighted the importance of storytelling in binding people together to create common roots and in illustrating how to create positive change. Participants practiced their own stories and strategies applying narrative tools during small group interactive breakouts.

Read the full summary for this working session.