Environmental Law - Course Outline
This is the course outline on Environmental Law (General).
Under TA-7735, a South Asian Conference on Environmental Justice was held in Bhurban, Pakistan. The conference focused on three thematic sessions, Environmental law and policy, Environmental Adjudication and Environmental Education and Capacity Building. The conference concluded with passing of a declaration, which recommended for capacity building of the Judiciary in environmental laws. It was suggested that environmental law training to judges through judicial academies should be offered and such training should also be extended to prosecutors and other lawyers being members of the bar.
As a next step under the TA, the national consultant for environmental law carried out a need assessment for training of judges and lawyers. The purpose of said training was to understand the existing level of awareness and understanding of Environmental Laws of the judges and lawyers in Pakistan and to come up with appropriate recommendations to bridge this gap.
The recommendation, which were formulated under the need assessment, included that all the judicial academies of Pakistan to include Environmental law as a mandatory subject in all training programs. Further, there was a need to develop an overarching course outline on Environmental laws for basic understanding of the subject based on law, precedents, principles, issues and practical aspects.
In addition to fundamental course, it was also noted that each area/province has its own unique environmental issues in addition to the common ones. Along with the fundamental course, there is a need to develop specialized courses for a particular issues for example a course on sustainable forest management, a course on coastal area issues and so on.
In perusal of the above recommendations, the national Consultant has prepared two sets of courses namely Fundamental Environmental Law Course and Thematic Environmental Law Courses. At present, it is proposed that as an initial step, the fundamental courses must be introduced at all judicial academies.