New Zealand introduces climate change law for financial firms in world first
New Zealand has become the first country to introduce a law that will require banks, insurers and investment managers to report the impacts of climate change on their business, minister for climate change James Shaw said on Tuesday. All banks with total assets of more than NZ$1 billion ($703 million), insurers with more than NZ$1 […]
Man saved from deportation after pollution plea in French legal “first”
A Bangladeshi man with asthma has avoided deportation from France after his lawyer argued that he risked a severe deterioration in his condition, and possibly premature death, due to the dangerous levels of pollution in his homeland. “To my knowledge, this is the first time a French court has applied the environment as one of […]
Anglo American sued over alleged mass lead poisoning of children in Zambia
A class action lawsuit has been filed against the mining company Anglo American over its alleged failure to prevent widespread toxic lead pollution in the Zambian town of Kabwe. The town hosted one of the world’s biggest lead mines for many decades and scientists have reported “alarming” levels of lead in people’s blood. “The public environmental health […]
Should animals have legal standing?
The New York Supreme Court is to hear arguments in November on whether an elephant can have legal personality. This may seem odd. But from a legal perspective it is not that strange. Indeed, it may be a practical way of using the law to protect the welfare of animals. To have a legal personality […]
Indonesia’s jobs law endangers environment, say activists
Environmentalists in Indonesia are calling for the reversal of a controversial law aimed at job creation because it is seen favouring business interests at the expense of the environment and labour. Indonesia, the world’s biggest producer of palm oil and nickel ore for electric vehicle batteries, has forests bigger than any outside the Amazon and […]
Election and Supreme Court Fight Will Decide Trump’s Environmental Legacy
President Trump has selected Judge Amy Coney Barrett to fill Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat on the Supreme Court. He has initiated the most aggressive environmental deregulation agenda in modern history, but as his first term drives to a close, many of his policies are being cut down by the courts — even by Republican-appointed jurists who the […]
Environmental human rights defenders in Mexico: The issue of structural violence
In 2019, 39 environmental human rights defenders were victims of attacks in Mexico. Of these, 15 were killed. According to the most recent report by the Mexican Center for Environmental Law, between 2012 and 2019, there were 499 attacks on land and environment activists that took place across the vast majority of states. This indicates permanent and diffuse […]
Bob Brown launches legal challenge to native forest logging in Tasmania
State-sanctioned felling is ‘based on a monumental lie’, former Greens leader says. The former Greens leader Bob Brown has launched a legal challenge to native forest logging in Tasmania, claiming it is inconsistent with federal environment law. The case by the Bob Brown Foundation, lodged in the federal court on Thursday, challenges what has been seen as […]
Los Cedros legal case could set a world precedent.
In a precedent-setting move, the Constitutional Court of Ecuador has announced it will take on the case of the threatened Los Cedros Protected Forest by using the Rights of Nature enshrined in the constitution. The Constitutional Court chose to hear this case recently and apply, for the first time, Ecuador’s constitutionally mandated Rights of Nature […]
In a fight over a Colombian coal mine, Covid-19 raises the stakes.
A group of activists from Wayuu, an Indigenous people of northern Colombia and Venezuela, have called upon the United Nations to intervene in their struggle against the owners of one of the biggest coal mines in the world. The mine, called Cerrejón, is located on the Guajira Peninsula near the Venezuelan border, right in the […]
