ERCS today launches our new Advocacy Manifesto, setting out a route map of how every person’s right to live in a healthy environment can be respected, protected, and fulfilled ...

A new ERCS briefing discusses the importance of amending Regulation 15 of the Civil Legal Aid (Scotland) Regulations 2002 to enable public interest environmental litigation and increase access to environmental justice. The briefing summarises evidence supplied by ERCS legal director Ben Christman to the Scottish Parliament’s Equalities, Human Rights, and Civil Justice Committee in November 2024, which highlights how the ‘joint interest test’ specified under Regulation 15 of the Civil Legal Aid Regulations 2002 makes it difficult to obtain legal aid for environmental cases. ERCS recommends that Regulation 15 is amended so that it does not apply to cases falling within the scope of the Aarhus Convention. Read the briefing

Over sixty organisations have written to UK government ministers ahead of a major meeting of the Council of Europe, urging them to back proposals for an additional binding Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) that would finally recognise the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment. An Additional Protocol would strengthen the rights of all 675 million citizens living in Council of Europe member states. Recognition of the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment would harmonise standards in the region, provide legal certainty, strengthen domestic environmental legislation, protect vulnerable communities, and support environmental defenders. It would also reaffirm the European Court of Human Rights’ legitimacy in addressing matters related to environmental rights, allowing it to build on its significant and growing environmental jurisprudence, and improving the protection of lives and livelihoods for current and future generations. The letter, coordinated by organisations including Friends of the Earth, Wildlife & Countryside Link, and the Environmental Rights Centre for Scotland (ERCS), follows an intervention from UN appointed experts on human rights and the environment, who added their voice to the growing calls for an Additional Protocol recognising the right. On 13 May, the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers’ Drafting Group on Human Rights and the Environment will decide whether to move forward in drafting an Additional Protocol recognising the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment in the ECHR. The move is backed by countries including Portugal, Slovenia, Iceland, Georgia, and France, but the UK has yet to make …

In this long read, our Legal Director Dr Ben Christman breaks down the failures of the Scottish Government’s review on environmental governance, in which they refused to strengthen environmental protections ...