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... to contribute
to the establishment and implementation
of legal and institutional frameworks that foster the sustainable conservation and use of the environment and natural resources in an equitable international context
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About the organisation
 The International Environmental Law Research Centre (IELRC) is an independent, non-profit research organisation established in 1995. It is constituted as a Swiss Association under Articles 60ff of the Swiss Civil Code and is a registered charity in the UK (1107304). It has offices in Switzerland (Geneva), the UK (London) and Kenya (Nairobi), and benefits from a strong network of expertise in India.
IELRC provides a unique forum for collaborative research between researchers in the North and South. It is uniquely positioned to provide policy-relevant research at the international level given its strong network of competence in the North and the South and the location of two of its offices in Geneva and Nairobi where some of the most significant international environmental governance decisions are taken.
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Vision
The aim of the IELRC is to contribute to the establishment and implementation of legal and institutional frameworks that foster the sustainable conservation and use of the environment and natural resources in an equitable international context.
Mission
IELRC's mission is to undertake policy-related academic research relating to the environment in a North-South context. IELRC specifically seeks to contribute to the development of legal and institutional frameworks that foster equitable and sustainable environmental management at the local, national and international level by fostering links between research communities and policy-makers in the North and South. |
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Strategy
IELRC has adopted a diversified approach to its work: |
| IELRC focuses firstly on international environmental legal issues including biodiversity, climate change and desertification: |
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IELRC examines these issues from an international perspective, in particular with regard to their North-South dimension. |
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IELRC also analyses these issues from a national or local perspective. In this regard we focus, for instance, on issues associated with the implementation of international law at the national level. |
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| IELRC also works on a number of questions that are closely related to environmental issues: |
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IELRC focuses on the impacts of intellectual property rights on environmental management, in particular in the context of the development of biotechnology. |
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IELRC also focuses on the relationship between the realisation of human rights and sustainable environmental management both at the international and national levels.
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| IELRC works on general policies and issues as well as specific case studies to highlight the necessity to go from the general to the specific and the converse: |
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IELRC has worked on general conceptual issues such as the role of property rights in environmental management or the place of equity in international environmental agreements. |
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IELRC has also worked on much more specific developments at the national and regional level such as the development of biosafety frameworks and the introduction of WTO-mandated intellectual property rights in agriculture. |
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| IELRC is aware that the existence of appropriate legal frameworks do not ensure their implementation. The issue of national and local implementation of international and national standards has also figured prominently in IELRC's work programme: |
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IELRC scholars have worked on the implementation of general international agreements such as the Biodiversity Convention in specific countries of the South and on the implementation of environment-related WTO standards in specific developing countries. |
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| IELRC has a network of regional and national expertise in different regions of the world: |
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IELRC provides its network of scholars engaged in academic research a platform for the dissemination of their publications through its website. Most of these publications are the product of independent research which is not related to any work that IELRC itself may undertake. |
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