ELAJ member and PhD Candidate, Alessandra Accogli, is organising, with the support of the UCD Sutherland School of Law and supervisor Amrei Muller, a Research Workshop entitled ‘Legal protection of carbon sinks in the fight against climate change: interactions between ecosystem protection and human rights’. The workshop will be held on 4-5 December 2023 at UCD Sutherland School of Law (Dublin, Ireland).
The workshop is centred on the legal protection of carbon sinks and aims to offer a selected group of academics and practitioners a forum to analyse and discuss the role of carbon sinks in climate change mitigation from a legal perspective. While there is consensus in the literature on the importance of carbon sinks in addressing climate change, this scientific understanding of carbon sinks in the carbon cycle rarely translates into legal research. At the same time, ecosystems that act as carbon sinks are often subject to human uses (e.g. land use activities) leading to their degradation and the release of the stored carbon back into the atmosphere. While restrictions on such uses aim, on the one hand, to limit the degradation of ecosystems and to ensure their conservation, on the other hand, they can have an impact on the human rights of those whose livelihoods or culture are linked to the natural habitat and its resources. Simultaneously, human rights may be affected by ecosystem degradation itself. Therefore, the workshop intends to address the tensions and synergies between the interest in protecting and restoring carbon sinks and the human rights at stake in ecosystem management and to promote legal approaches that allow synergies to be realised in tackling climate change, ecosystem degradation and human rights violations in an integrated fashion.
If you are interested in attending the workshop, please contact the organisers at alessandra.accogli@ucdconnect.ie. More information about the programme and invited speakers will be shared in due course.
Environmental Law and Justice 