Reaching out to Latin American lawyers

05/06/2019

Some countries in Latin America have already enacted specific climate change laws (e.g. Mexico and Peru) while others (e.g. Chile) are in the process of developing new legislation. To raise the critical mass among legal experts in the region who can contribute to the legal implementation agenda at the domestic, regional and international levels a network of climate change lawyers is being set up in Latin America.

With the support of LRI, a pilot of the initiative will be implemented first in Brazil, spearheaded by lawyers Caroline Dihl Prolo and Flávia Bellaguarda. Caroline is an attorney and head of the environmental law practice at the Brazilian law firm Stocche Forbes. Flávia Bellaguarda is a qualified lawyer in Brazil, climate change officer at ICLEI SAMS and co-founder of the Youth Climate Leaders – a social enterprise for young leadership training on climate change.

Caroline, who has been collaborating with LRI and working in the UNFCCC negotiations for more than seven years says: “In this climate crisis era, the law can be a powerful instrument to address climate change risks and to adapt to changing climate realities.”

The initiative is, therefore, aimed at building capacity and sharing legal tools amongst practitioners in the region, with a view to building a network that can provide legal support to governments, parliamentarians, civil society and other actors to help ensure implementation of the Paris Agreement and pave the way for a low carbon economy on the national and regional scale.

The first step in building the network was a survey amongst lawyers in Brazil. In response to a targeted questionnaire and call for support, almost one hundred lawyers from different walks of life expressed an interest to further develop their legal knowledge in the climate change context. Some of them (22%) indicated to have no such expertise; half felt they had acquired some relevant legal knowledge as part of their academic education and research.