IUCN, the International Union for Conservation of Nature

Environmental Governance is the means by which society determines and acts on goals and priorities related to the management of natural resources. This includes the rules, both formal and informal, that govern human behavior in decision-making processes as well as the decisions themselves. Appropriate legal frameworks on the global, regional, national and local level are a prerequisite for good environmental governance.

The IUCN Environmental Law Programme (ELP) is undertaking different activities that contribute to laying the foundations for good environmental governance.

The Precautionary Principle Guidelines have been approved by the IUCN Council at its May 2007 meeting. This document is the result of consultations within the Commission on Environmental Law based on the "Guidelines for Applying the Precautionary Principle to Biodiversity Conservation and Natural Resource Management", developed over a number of years by the Precautionary Principle Project, and published in 2005.

The ELP is building the capacity of

• Academics
  The IUCN Academy of Environmental Law brings together outstanding academics and university faculties to teach and build capacity at the university-level in environmental law. The Academy’s activities help to advance legal education for integrating environment and just development world-wide, with special attention to developing countries and countries with economies in transition. 
   
• Practitioners
  The ELC in collaboration with the IUCN Commission on Environmental Law (CEL) is organizing and contributing to training and workshops of practitioners holding different kinds of legal positions. Such activities are a means to gather public officials, policy makers or judges from different countries and regions to discuss how to develop, implement and enforce regulatory frameworks and promote good environmental governance. See: Judges and the Rule of Law - Creating the Links: Environment, Human Rights and Poverty.
  The Environmental Law Centre (ELC) has also been closely collaborating with a number of organizations to enable legal specialists from developing countries to access and conduct research on environmental law and policy at the ELC. See: Environmental Law in Developing Countries - Selected Issues.
   
• The next generation of environmental lawyers and law students
  Every year, the ELC attracts fellows and interns from around the world who enjoy the rewarding experience of working in an international organization and supporting the ELC legal officers and their ELP projects. This provides an opportunity for the next generation of environmental lawyers to get hands-on experience and build their capacity in manifold areas of environmental law.
  
  Furthermore, the ELC has a chair on international environmental law at the University of Applied Sciences in Cologne, Germany, where ELC legal officers teach an environmental law course to students as part of an international masters program on Resource Management in the Tropics and Subtropics.

The ELP is also providing advice on the development as well as the implementation of international environmental agreements.

For example, CEL, together with IUCN members and other partners, has developed a Draft International Covenant on Environment and Development which has been presented to the Member States of the UN General Assembly and now exists in its third edition. This covenant is a framework or umbrella treaty that bridges the issues of environment and development by knitting together the principles reflected in the many sectoral treaties.

The ELP has produced guidebooks that introduce, explain or analyze different Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEA) in order to facilitate their implementation. Based on these experiences, ELC is supporting IUCN delegations during the Conferences of the Parties of biodiversity related MEAs. Together with CEL, ELC is also assisting in the preparation of positions of working groups or advising on the implementation of different programmes of works.

Apart from its global focus, the ELP is also analyzing legal trends of a cross-cutting nature in different regions of the world.

Together with FAO and UNEP, the ELC provides a web-based platform that enables people from around the world to get access to legal and policy information that shapes environmental governance. ECOLEX, a gateway to environmental law for which the ELC is the management unit, contains information on treaties, law and policy literature, national legislation, and soon, court decisions. These data are grouped in four data bases, searchable separately or in combination.