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ELAW Bulletin

ELAW partners are celebrating a big victory for an enormous forest complex which includes Sri Lanka’s largest national park – Wilpatthu National Park – and contiguous forests that are home to many threatened species, including leopards, elephants, sloth bears, and migratory birds.

ELAW Bulletin

Major climate impacts and exorbitant costs have sounded the death knell for a new proposed coal-fired power station in South Africa.

ELAW Bulletin

Iniciativa Ciudadana y Profesional para la Defensa Jurídica del Litoral (Prolitoral), defended by ELAW partner Dr. Eduardo Salazar Ortuño, celebrate the hard-won victory! Prolitoral is a collective formed by Ecologistas en Acción, the Asociación de Naturalistas del Sureste (ANSE), Amacora and other environmental and legal professionals.

ELAW Bulletin

We are thrilled to welcome ELAW Fellow Anna Fomina, a Russian attorney working to protect communities in southwest Siberia from polluting coal operations.

ELAW Bulletin

ELAW partners at the Centre for Environmental Justice (CEJ) have been fighting, for more than one year, to have foreign waste sent back to the UK and hold polluters accountable.

ELAW Bulletin

 We are thrilled to announce that ELAW partner Lottie Cunningham Wren in Nicaragua has won a 2020 Right Livelihood Award “for her ceaseless dedication to the protection of indigenous lands and communities from exploitation and plunder.”

ELAW Bulletin

Last week, ELAW partners at Greenwatch co-hosted a two-day workshop with the Judicial Training Institute of Uganda to help judges and legal professionals get up to speed on climate litigation and how it can promote climate justice and hold governments accountable for the effects of climate change.

The world needs to move past coal. Coal kills people and is the largest source of CO2 emissions – we simply cannot continue burning coal if we hope to protect the climate.

ELAW Bulletin

A team of ELAW partners, including Adv. T. Mohan and Adv. A. Yogeshwaran, with senior Adv. R. Vaigai as lead counsel, along with other Chennai-based lawyers, including B. Poongkhulali, Chethana, and Annapoorani, successfully challenged an attempt by Sterlite Copper, a unit of global mining conglomerate Vedanta Ltd., to reopen its plant, which was ordered closed in 2018 after many years of toxic operations.

ELAW Bulletin

 ELAW partner Olivier Ndoole reports a big win for renewable energy in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC): The Nuru company’s 1.3MW solar hybrid project in Goma has received a permit to begin construction and distribution.

ELAW Bulletin
This month, the Centre for Environmental Justice in Sri Lanka announced back to back wins to enforce existing environmental protections.

ELAW Bulletin

The global pandemic has put in-person ELAW Fellowships on hold, but we are working “face-to-face” with new Fellows from Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and Guinea to help them build skills.

ELAW Bulletin

Guyana's EPA is considering a proposal by US oil giant ExxonMobil to expand oil exploitation in the Stabroek block.
ELAW Staff Scientist, Dr. Mark Chernaik is helping Melinda Janki, an international lawyer and attorney-at-law in Guyana point out the potential harm from the development

Everyone at the Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide (ELAW) is adapting to the challenges of the global pandemic and finding ways to build on our high impact work. For years, we have done much of our work online, so we are well positioned to collaborate with our partners during this difficult time.

ELAW Bulletin

The Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association (BELA) has tirelessly taken on polluters and defended communities and ecosystems since it was founded in 1992 by Dr. Mohiuddin Farooque. We are thrilled to announce that BELA, now lead by ELAW Partner, Rizwana Hasan, has been awarded a 2020 Tang Prize for Rule of Law.

ELAW Bulletin

The world’s largest steel producer, ArcelorMittal, was fined this month for violating three atmospheric emission license conditions at its Vanderbijlpark operations, south of Johannesburg.

ELAW Bulletin

ELAW is pleased to welcome our summer legal interns Kara Smith and Daniel Moltke Mogtaderi, and our undergraduate interns Ebba Hooft Toomey and Zoe Light.

ELAW Bulletin

We are pleased to share a new video about the power of scientists to advance environmental justice, produced by our friends at True Costs Initiative.

ELAW Bulletin

The Norwegian Supreme Court will soon hear an appeal challenging the Norwegian government’s decision to open new areas of the Arctic for oil exploration. The appeal was filed by Greenpeace and Nature & Youth (the Norwegian branch of Friends of the Earth). The Court has not yet set a date for the hearing.

ELAW Bulletin

The ELAW Fellows Program is adapting to a new world. We planned to host Panamanian biologist Isaias Ramos (at right) for a two-week ELAW Fellowship at our U.S. office in April, but due to COVID-19 moved his program online, with good results.

ELAW Bulletin 

Since we can't gather in-person, we have organized a virtual opportunity to get together! Please join us for a screening and conversation about the documentary, The Story of Plastic.

ELAW Bulletin

This year, Earth Day comes as the COVID-19 pandemic rages around the world. All of us on the ELAW US team are working together from home and staying safe.

ELAW is thrilled to announce that Pedro León Gutiérrez is rejoining the ELAW team!

ELAW Fellows Dickens Kumugisha from Uganda (above left) and Olivier Ndoole from the Democratic Republic of the Congo wrapped up their ELAW Fellowships mid-March.

We all need clean fresh water, but poor waste management, polluting industries, paving wetlands, and the climate
crisis are leading to severe water shortages in India, South Africa, and beyond. All over the world, citizens are speaking
out for clean fresh water.

ELAW Bulletin

We are pleased to welcome two new ELAW Fellows. Hugo Echeverria joined us from Quito, Ecuador, and Gligor Radecic arrived from Zagreb, Croatia.

ELAW Bulletin

Please join us in welcoming ELAW Fellow, Dickens Kamugisha, CEO at the Africa Institute for Energy Governance (AFIEGO).

ELAW Bulletin

Twenty-five years ago, I traveled to Brazil to reach out to public interest lawyers and invite them to connect to ELAW. I met the founders of the (then) new organization Instituto Socioambiental (ISA). ELAW has worked with terrific lawyers at ISA ever since. In 1996, ISA sponsored the first ever indigenous lawyer in Brazil, Paulo Pankararu, to come to Oregon and work in our office.

ELAW Bulletin

We are pleased to report another big win by our partners at the Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association.