December
15, 2020
Dear
GNHRE Members,
It’s
been quite a year for the Global Network for Human Rights and the
Environment! As you all know, the GNHRE
is a loose affiliation of lawyers, academics, activists and other professionals,
globally dispersed and intellectually diverse, who all share a human rights
orientation to environmental protection.
We
write now to give you an update of what the GNHRE has been up to, and a preview
of the year ahead.
The
GNHRE’s greatest resource is the people who are members, and we are especially
grateful to those members of the Core Team whose energies and enthusiasm have
galvanized the network’s activities. This year, we have expanded the Core Team
to enlarge our global reach and to focus on programming and progress in a few
key areas.
THE
CORE TEAM
Erin Daly, Director
Dina Lupin Townsend, Deputy
Director
Astrid Bernal, Media and
Web Content
Tim Blackman, Website
Management
Josh Gellers, New Members
Sara Seck, Research
Repository
Uday Shankar, New Members
Natalia Urzola, Membership
Coordinator
Regional Directors and
Deputy Directors
Africa: Clive Vinti, Caiphas
Brewster Soyapi, Angela Kariuki
Asia: Uday Shankar and
Pankaj Karn
Asia-Pacific: Peter Burdon
and Manuel Solis
Caribbean: Lisa Benjamin
Europe: Annalisa Savaresi
and Margaretha Wewerinke
Latin America: Maria Antonia
Tigre and Daniel Noroña
North America: Sara Seck and
Rebecca Bratspies
Natalia Urzola, our new Membership Coordinator,
is excited to be working with GNHRE’s members -- our greatest
resource! She'll be developing new opportunities for enhancing members’
connections to each other and to support and promote knowledge exchange. One of
those opportunities is a new mentorship program, which aims to provide a forum
where one-to-one relationships between members with similar interests and
experience are able to emerge and thrive. Look for some more exciting new
programs in the near future!
Astrid Bernal is our new Coordinator for Media and Web
Content – ensuring up-to-date communications with our 1.200-1.600 friends
and followers on Facebook and Twitter, with help from Daniella Toma and Otto Spijkers.
NEW PROGRAMS
This year, for the first time, we organized a series
of Webinars focusing on Human Rights Strategies in Climate Change Litigation,
the recordings of which are available in the Video Library on our
newly renovated website.
- A Global
Overview (June), with Hari Osofsky, Joana Setzer, David Boyd, and Tessa Khan
(organized by Annalisa Savaresi)
- Southeast
Asia (July), with Surya Deva, Sanjay Upadhyay, Tara Prasad
Sapkota (organized by Uday Shankar)
- Latin
America (August), with Soledad Garcia Muñoz, Astrid Puentes, Juan Auz, and
Monica Feria-Tinta (organized by Maria Antonia Tigre and Daniel Noroña)
- Europe
(September), with Roda Verheyen,
Andrew Jackson, Dennis van Berkel, and Louise Fournier (organized by Margaretha
Wewerinke), and
- Africa (November),
with Nicole Loser, Passy Amayo, Gino Cocchiaro, and Andrew Gilder (organized by
Clive Vinti, Angela Kariuki, and Caiphas Soyapi)
This series complemented a webinar co-sponsored with
Environmental Law and Governance Association offering an introduction to the
field of human rights and the environment and featuring John Knox, David Boyd,
Sumudu Atapattu, and Dina Lupin Townsend.
We have also launched a Book Discussion
series, which will continue in 2021. In November, we featured Josh Gellers’ Rights for Robots, available for free
download! This event is also available in the Video Library. Next year, we’ll
complement the series with Curated Reading Lists on selected topics.
Also upcoming: GNHRE is proud to be a co-sponsor of
THE TIME IS NOW: Canadian and Global Recognition of the Right to a Healthy
Environment, January 26, 2021, 5-7 pm PST | 8-10 pm EST
NEW WEBSITE FEATURES
In addition to our ever-growing community pages –
featuring upcoming events, blog posts, and other news of interest to our community
members – the new website includes our growing Research Repository, as
well as a page featuring our new institutional partnerships.
This year, the GNHRE Community page has featured a
number of exceptional blog posts and commentaries. Maria-Antonia Tigre and Victoria
Lichet blog
post in October discussed
the UNHRC's recent adoption of a resolution on realising the rights of the
child through a healthy environment. The blog post explores the critical links
between the human rights of children and the protection of a healthy
environment, a critical issue given the heightened vulnerability of children to
air and water pollution as well as to the effects of climate change. In
September, Maria Antonia Tigre & Alex Goodman wrote an excellent blog
post on Case ADPF 708 involving
Brazil’s Climate Fund. This case constituted Brazil's first public hearing on
climate policy. The plaintiff's in the case challenged the Bolsonaro
government's effective policy of paralysing the Fund. This blog post highlights
the importance of this case, emphasising the Court's decision to hold a hearing
and Judge Barroso's statement that “environmental protection is not a political
option, but a constitutional duty.” In June, Tracy Lynn Field contributed a
fascinating discussion of her new book, ‘State Governance of Mining,
Development and Sustainability’. In the post, Tracy describes her 'five-year
research journey into the languages we speak about mining, development and
sustainability, and their translation into legal and economic concepts and
rules', providing us with fantastic insight both into the book itself and the
road she took to writing it. In February, Otto Spijkers contributed an
important blog
post on the Urgenda case in the Netherlands and the idea of dikastophobia,
challenging us to think about the impacts and costs of the case on public
interest litigation for the environment. Hector Herrera's blog
post on fracking provided
an invaluable human rights perspective on the state of fracking all over the
globe, discussing recent developments and tracking global trends. The post
discusses developments in regulation and litigation and makes the connections
between human rights, climate change and fracking explicit. In addition to
these insightful and topical blog posts, each of our webinars has been
accompanied by a blog post.
One of the website’s most popular features is the
new Member Spotlight, in
which we’ve so far featured Gabriela Oanta, Monica Feria-Tinta, Maria Antonia
Tigre, and GNHRE Founder Anna Grear.
Thanks to the extraordinary efforts of Tim Blackman,
we continue to improve and strengthen the website. Early next year, we’ll roll
out a new Member Profile page; at that point, we’ll ask you to update your
photo and biographical information.
We wish you all a very happy and healthy end of 2021
and we look forward to bright things ahead in 2021!
Warmly,
Erin Daly & Dina Townsend, on behalf of the GNHRE
Core Team