PluriCourts, Center of Excellence for the Study of the Legitimacy of International Courts and Tribunals at the University of Oslo, will host the 14th Annual Colloquium of the IUCN Academy of Environmental Law, 20-25 June 2016.
We are currently inviting abstract submissions for presentations at the 2016 Oslo Colloquium by 15 January 2016.
The theme of the Colloquium is “The Environment in Court – Environmental protection in national and international courts, tribunals, and compliance mechanisms”. This broad topic seeks to address procedural and substantive aspects of environmental adjudication, both in national, regional and international courts, tribunals as well as non-compliance mechanisms of multilateral environmental treaties. In the context of the Sustainable Developments Goals (SDGs), Principle 10 of the Rio Declaration as well as the Aarhus Convention, the idea of strengthening of an environmental rule of law through access to justice has gathered considerable momentum
The main questions to be explored by this colloquium relate to what the role is, should be and could be for the judiciary in promoting environmentally sustainable development? What progresses and advances have been made in protecting the environment through courts and which obstacles exist to enhancing effective environmental adjudication? The colloquium attempts to address these issues along various, crossing “axes”: national and international adjudication, procedural and substantive legal issues, comparisons of different legal systems, and the relationships between policy and law, input and outcome, lex lata and lex ferenda, law and ethics, effectiveness and equity.
This Colloquium takes litigation of environmental disputes (and disputes with environmental aspects) before courts as a starting point for discussions. Its ultimate goal is to deliberate the effectiveness and legitimacy of existing national and international adjudication as well as to discuss further feasible and effective avenues for dealing with environmental disputes.
– For more information go to www.iucnael.org