Image Description: Professor Marie-Claire Cordonier Segger, Dr Markus Gehring and Professor Laura Diaz Anadon leading a supervision on the Sustainable Development Goals and the Biosphere for University of Cambridge inaugural learners who assisted in the courses.
Humanity is at a crossroads – facing a convergence of global crises, including anthropogenic climate change with exacerbated extreme weather events and natural disasters, alarming biodiversity degradation and loss with over a million animal and plant species currently threatened with extinction; alongside rising levels of poverty, inequality and risks to health and human rights.
Such global challenges threaten to undermine decades of efforts to secure sustainable development, and holding back achievement of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. While recent international agreements, frameworks and instruments such as the 2015 Paris Agreement, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and the UN System of Environmental Economic Accounting have been carefully crafted to address these challenges on the international level, there are far too few law and policy specialists with the knowledge, skills and training to implement these treaties on all levels. To bridge this ‘capacity chasm’, CISDL and several University of Cambridge and international organisations have created a new partnership, supported by a generous gift from Dr Gabrielle Bacon, to launch the Democratising Education for Global Sustainability and Justice programme.
The programme aims to democratise education on the law and policy dimensions of sustainability, bridging the current capacity chasm by developing new short online courses for current and future law and policy leaders around the world, and by convening and supporting global engagement and communities of practice to advance the global Sustainable Development Goals, worldwide. Through a global selection process, the courses are provided free of cost to successful applicants, especially those from highly climate vulnerable and least development countries (LDCs).
The first four online short courses are helping learners to advance the implementation of crucial international agreements address global sustainability challenges, include:
- Key Essentials: The Sustainable Development Goals and the Law
- Key Essentials: The Paris Agreement, Sustainable Development and the Law
- Key Essentials: The Global Biodiversity Framework, Sustainable Development and the Law
- Key Essentials: The Wealth Economy, Sustainable Development and the Law
Image Description: Professor Jorge Cabrera, Lead Counsel for CISDL’s Biodiversity and Biosafety Programme, providing expert remarks on Access and Benefit-Sharing in light of the recently adopted Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework during a module in the Key Essentials: The Global Biodiversity Framework, Sustainable Development and the Law pilot course.
Each short online course provides tailored modules of recorded instruction featuring renowned professors and experts in key fields, carefully curated open-access resources, PowerPoint summaries of key materials and brief assessments. Through live sessions, learners meet experts and course instructors and have the opportunity to engage with fellow members of their cohort, building and strengthening new communities of practice and professional networks worldwide.
Images Description: Left to right, Adv Ayman Cherkaoui (Lead Counsel for Climate Change, CISDL), and Dr Antoinette Nestor (Manager, CISDL’s Climate Law and Governance Initiative), providing welcoming remarks during the live course orientation for the Key Essentials: The Paris Agreement, Sustainable Development and the Law pilot course.
More than 2,012 individuals from 112 countries around the world expressed interest in helping to pilot the first courses. Through a global, competitive selection process, a cohort of over 540 future and current law and policy leaders from more than 90 countries were successfully granted places as pilot learners, and committed to help develop and improve the initial versions of the first four online courses. These pilot learners are offering comprehensive feedback on the course materials, providing insights and feedback to improve the offerings.
Images Description: From left to right, Lydia Young (Coordinator, Biodiversity Law and Governance Initiative, CISDL), Surya Sathujoda (MASt Student, Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, University of Cambridge) and Adv Nada Gadalla (Associate Fellow, CISDL) leading breakout discussions with their peers during the live sessions of the pilot courses.
To understand and lead increased engagement in efforts to advance the global Sustainable Development Goals, learners explore the law and policy dimensions of SDGs related to poverty and economic progress, human rights and society, and the Earth’s biosphere, examining good practice legal innovations, Voluntary National Reports and global partnerships.
To support implementation and compliance with the Paris Agreement on Climate Change under the UNFCCC, learners examine good practice reforms to strengthen local, national, regional and international law and policy regimes on climate mitigation, adaptation and resilience, and finance, and explore how legal frameworks can help achieve their country’s Nationally Determined Contributions to the global response to climate change.
To strengthen law and policy leadership to address the world’s ‘biodiversity emergency’, implementing the new Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) under the Convention on Biological Diversity, learners analyse and test legal and policy means to deliver on commitments to conserve and restore natural systems, to promote sustainable use and ensure equitable access and benefit-sharing, and also to exponentially mobilise and invest new financial resources. Finally, to improve the way the world values and deploys physical, social and natural capital, learners explore a global Wealth Economy approach to tracking progress, and discover how to use novel systems of accounting and investment to understand and measure economic development and sustainability.
Current and future law and policy leaders from any country, anywhere in the world and especially in the global south, will soon be able to register to express interest in being selected for scholarships to join the new online courses, free of charge, in August / September of 2023, accessing these new opportunities for education on global sustainability and justice.
The Cambridge-based Programme Committee, under the leadership of Professor Marie-Claire Cordonier Segger, Visiting Chair in Sustainable Development Law and Policy at the University of Cambridge and Senior Director of CISDL, with the excellent advice and guidance of Adv Ayman Cherkaoui, Lead Counsel for CISDL’s Climate Change Programme; Professor Jorge Cabrera, Lead Counsel of CISDL’s Biodiversity and Biosafety Programme; Dr Markus Gehring, Lead Counsel for CISDL’s Trade, Investment and Finance Programme and other experts; together with advisors Dr Antoinette Nestor, Associated Fellow of CISDL and Manager of CISDL’s Climate Law and Governance Initiative; Ms Lydia Young, Coordinator of CISDL’s Biodiversity Law and Governance Initiative and others, is shaping and strengthening capacity to address global sustainability challenges, worldwide, through these efforts. Thanks are especially due to the programme team, Ms Maeve McDermott, Programme Coordinator and CISDL Associate Fellow, Mr Tejas Rao, Research Coordinator and Assistant Editor, also CISDL Manager, and Ms Thalsa-Thiziri Mekaouche, Research and Programme Assistant and CISDL Communications Officer, for their invaluable contributions to the success of the programme in democratising education to address these crucial global sustainability and justice challenges.
Image description: Professor Marie-Claire Cordonier Segger leading a supervision session on the Sustainable Development Goals and the Biosphere in the gardens of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law.
To find out more, especially if interested in supporting the new programme, please write to the Visiting Chair as Programme Director and her team, through the following contact.