INAUGURAL LECTURE 2011-12

Doing the Sustainable Development Dance: Stepping from the Education for Sustainable Development Movement to Environmental Justice in Legal Education

by
Jane Holder 
Professor of Environmental Law, UCL Faculty of Laws

Chaired by
Stephen Hockman QC
6 Pump Court 

on Thursday 17 November 2011, from 6-7.15pm

Venue:
UCL Gustave Tuck Lecture Theatre
UCL Central Campus
Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT 

Accredited with 1 CPD hour by the
Solicitors Regulation Authority and the Bar Standards Board (Pending)

About this lecture:
We are nearing the end of the UN’s Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) (2005-14). This has triggered important initiatives in schools and, increasingly, in higher and further education. In this lecture I critically examine the form of sustainability advanced by the ESD movement and question the role of legal education in furthering this. I am particularly concerned with how to relate sustainability and justice, including environmental justice – the fair and equal distribution of environmental ‘goods’ and ‘bads’, since combining these concepts seems to offer an important means by which law teachers can contribute to the ESD agenda and, possibly, reframe it in a more far-reaching and politically challenging manner. I illustrate these points with examples of radical ESD thinking and action, including the process of ‘greening’ UCL.
 

About the speaker: 
Jane Holder has carried out research on environmental law since graduating from Warwick University in 1990. Her PhD was on environmental assessment, published as a book, Environmental Assessment: the Regulation of Decision Making in 2004. She has also worked on the law relating to hedgerows, town and village greens and, latterly, environmental justice issues and the education for sustainable development movement. Jane is co-chair of the Executive Board of UCL’s Sustainable Cities Grand Challenge and a Public Engagement Beacon Mentor.