Northern Ireland

This call for evidence seeks views on the UK’s compliance with the Aarhus Convention’s access-to-justice provisions (Article 9), focusing on three issues raised by the UN Aarhus Compliance Committee about Northern Ireland’s justice system: Costs protection – ensuring justice is not prohibitively expensive, covering the effectiveness of current regulations, appeals and cost caps, shared caps, cross-undertakings in damages, and costs...

In recent years Just Transition has been the subject of significant research and analysis and is increasingly enshrined in legal obligations at national and supranational level. It has been widely acknowledged that just transition policies and initiatives can deliver useful measures and on the ground action to address the social risks of industrial decarbonisation and make decarbonisation socially fair and...

Lough Neagh, the largest freshwater lake in Britain or Ireland, is vital to local communities but faces long-standing management issues. These include environmental damage from unregulated sand extraction, habitat loss, declining fish and bird populations, and serious water pollution. Recent concerns have sparked calls for public ownership. This briefing explains the current ownership situation, why it's problematic, and suggests alternative...

This report is part of an Environmental Justice Network Ireland (EJNI) project exploring strategic litigation on the island of Ireland, funded by the European Climate Foundation. The report has been informed by deskbased research and an initial scoping exercise which involved a small, focused (Chatham House Rules1) workshop for NGOs and an event bringing together the key players in strategic...

In June 2024, the first all-island conference on costs and funding was held in Queens University Belfast. The conference, 'Demystifying the cost of environmental justice on the island of Ireland', was organised by Environmental Justice Network Ireland (EJNI), the Climate Bar Association, Public Interest Litigation Support NI (PILS), Friends of the Earth Northern Ireland and Queen’s University Belfast Centre for...

‘Rights of nature’ (RoN) is an emerging and evolving paradigm that recognises the intrinsic rights of ecosystems and species to evolve, flourish, and regenerate. The possibility of adopting a rights of nature approach on the island of Ireland has been the subject of increasing attention, with academics, NGOs and grassroots communities exploring how a concept that has been adopted in...

Peaceful protest has been a key tool in many of the most significant social movements for equality and against oppression, and the right to protest is a fundamental part of our democracy. This guide tells you about: ■ Your right to protest under Northern Ireland (NI) law1 ; ■ What you are allowed to do at a protest; and ■...

This independent research report titled ‘The Environment, Human Rights and the Windsor Framework’ was commissioned by the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission and authored by Dr Ciara Brennan, Dr Mary Dobbs, Dr Orla Kelleher, Ms Alison Hough BL and Dr Lisa Claire Whitten. The report examines the relationship between Article 2 of the Windsor Framework, which deals with the rights...

Almost all environmental challenges facing the island of Ireland – and there are many – will ultimately require cooperation across the border. This has been recognised at government and policy level, and explicitly in the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement (GF/BA) where the environment is identified as a key area for cooperation.i Despite this, Northern Ireland and Ireland have developed (with some...

Brexit poses a significant threat to environmental governance on the island of Ireland due to regulatory divergence between Northern Ireland (UK) and the Republic of Ireland (EU). This divergence—differences in laws, standards, and implementation—risks creating regulatory gaps, enforcement issues, funding loss, economic imbalance, conservation problems, cross-border cooperation difficulties, and transboundary pollution. There are three main areas of divergence: Covered by...