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Vance Center Helps Train Lawyers Across Southern Africa on Environmental Law
The Vance Center co-sponsored a workshop in early December, providing lawyers from across southern Africa with the tools to strategically litigate in defense of the environment.
Participants in the environmental litigation training workshop in Cape Town, December 2024. Photo credit: Natural Justice.
More than 50 lawyers from 10 southern African countries convened in Cape Town from December 5-8 for an environmental and climate litigation training, covering topics ranging from climate change to critical minerals to carbon markets. The Vance Center co-organized the workshop with African legal empowerment organization Natural Justice and the American Bar Association’s Center for Human Rights.
The workshop was designed to provide generalists and human rights litigators with the tools to take on environmental cases across the continent. It is a pilot project under Natural Justice’s Environmental Lawyers Collective for Africa, an initiative that brings together public interest, environmental and human rights lawyers to work toward creating healthy and safe living environments for African communities, and ensuring justice for all in the face of climate challenges.
During the workshop, participants discussed the intersection of human rights and environmental legal frameworks, ways to mobilize their own countries’ legal frameworks toward environmental justice, and how they could learn from successful litigation in other countries. While many participants did not have a background in environmental law, they brought their expertise in other areas of the law to the conversation.
Sam Bookman, Senior Staff Attorney in the Vance Center’s Environment Program, helped design the training and presented two sessions: one on international climate law and the other on compensation for environmental loss and damage.
“The workshop offered a phenomenal opportunity to bring together a wide range of lawyers from across southern Africa, many of whom had never engaged with environmental issues before,” he said. “Participants were really engaged with learning from each other, and the room was buzzing with ideas about what actions lawyers could take to progress climate policy and environmental protection in their own countries.”
In addition to identifying actions that lawyers could take in their own countries, the workshop also focused on transnational efforts to make wealthier countries pay for the cost of responding and adapting to climate impacts.
Southern Africa is one of the world’s most vulnerable regions to climate change, with increased droughts, desertification, sea level rise, and food insecurity predicted over the coming decades. The region has produced a negligible proportion of historic greenhouse gas emissions, yet it is paying a disproportionate price for the actions of richer countries in the Global North.
Participants in a workshop session in Cape Town, December 2024. Photo credit: Natural Justice