December 2024 Newsletter

—

by

Legal Voices for the Future
in

Welcome to LVF’s first ever newsletter!

As we celebrate Legal Voices turning two years old, we’ve included a round-up below of LVF’s achievements over the last year, during which we continued our work to educate junior lawyers on the climate and ecological crises and create a welcoming community for our members. Going forward we will be issuing newsletters on a monthly or bi-weekly basis, streamlining the updates we provide to you. Highlights from this edition include:

  • In-depth summary of our December knowledge session
  • Round up of this year’s knowledge sessions
  • COP29 series with LVF member Mathilda Lorkin
  • LVF’s plans for next year

December knowledge session This covered Biodiversity Net Gain and Nature Recovery, and was led by LVF Stewardship Committee Member Harriet Hall and hosted at our partner the Grantham Research Institute.

: LVF Stewardship Committee member Harriet Hall hosting a panel event during the December 2024 knowledge session, speaking to panellists Molly Biddell, Isabel Sgambellon, and Henry Parkinson in a room in the Grantham Research Institute. Panellist Dr Juliet Rose appears on screen behind.

Harriet started the session with discussion of her chosen creative content, an extract from the book ‘The Fight for Beauty: Our Path to a Better Future’ by Fiona Reynolds. Fiona writes about the word ‘beauty’ being used in our everyday descriptions of nature but hardly ever in official documents and legislation, at least nowadays. In small breakout groups, we discussed the relevance of ‘beauty’ in our environmental movements – from the way claims to ‘beauty’ of landscapes can be weaponised against the development of renewable projects, to the anthropocentric idea of nature being ‘beautiful’ and for consumption by the human eye, rather than to run wild, unkempt and in its full glory. Among a wide range of topics, attendees also discussed particular moments when they have experienced beauty in the natural world.

We then heard from Harriet with an overview of what nature recovery means, the legal framework on biodiversity and nature recovery in England – the Environment Act 2021 – and a whistle stop tour of considerations relating to the new Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) regime.

Finally, Harriet hosted a fantastic discussion with four inspiring panellists working to address biodiversity loss and nature recovery. Topics discussed included:

  • Dr Juliet Rose, who has a background in plant science and ecological restoration and is currently Head of Development at the Eden Project, discussed how the BNG regime means many more ecologists are required, and that better funding and training needs to be provided for horticulture and agriculture programmes to meet this growing need.
  • Molly Biddell, who is Head of Natural Capital at Knepp Estate, one of the UK’s pioneering rewilding projects, spoke about what BNG means for an organisation like Knepp, which sees rewilding as “allowing nature to take over”. Molly also spoke about her experiences working with developers and the expectations of Local Planning Authorities, as well as the enormous potential for BNG to be the role model for defining what high-integrity nature ecosystem credit systems can look like.
  • Isabel Sgambellone is an associate in CMS’s Planning team, who has been heavily involved in providing advice to developer clients on BNG. Isabel provided her insights from working with clients on the legal agreements underpinning BNG, including s.106 Agreements and Conservation Covenants. In responding to an audience question, Isabel discussed the potential for enforcement action against developers under the regime.
  • Henry Parkinson – in-house legal counsel at the Langley Abbey Estate where he also heads up Langley Abbey Environment Project – talked about the importance of ambitious, landscape-scale, and strategically meaningful projects from a biodiverse perspective that are “bigger, better and more well-connected”. He emphasized the need to view the choice of onsite vs offsite projects in a nuanced way, as low distinctiveness habitats within (onsite) developments may not be the optimal place to focus efforts for species recovery.

Harriet has shared the following resources for those who would like to learn more about this topic:

  • Consolidated Government guidelines on BNG are available here.
  • The first local nature recovery strategy to be published in England can be found here.
  • One of our panellists Isabel Sgambellone has co-authored an informative article on BNG: Biodiversity Net Gain comes into force – what does it mean for you?
  • Forsters LLP have released a helpful podcast exploring BNG from developer (Part 1) and landowner (Part 2) perspectives, which is also available on Spotify.

If you weren’t able to join, a recording of the session is on our Legal Voices YouTube channel and on our website. If you did join we’d love to hear your feedback on the session here.

Knowledge sessions throughout the year

We hosted nine incredible knowledge sessions in 2024, with some amazing panellists (thank you to all of the hosts and speakers who gave up their time for LVF!). Thank you also to our fantastic partner the Grantham Research Institute for all their support with our knowledge sessions, as we wouldn’t be able to do what we do without them – and a special shout out to Emily Bradeen at GRI in particular for all her help. And most importantly, thank you to all of our members for engaging so deeply with our knowledge sessions. We kicked off the New Year with a jam-packed room for Flora Curtis’ session on the Rights of Nature; then heard from Josh Domb on Getting to Grips with ESG; in March, Alice Norga and Caitlín Comis from Protect explored Environmental Whistleblowing; then in April, Emma Short’s session considered the rise of Climate Finance; May saw Lucia Williams explore the role of the insurance industry in her session on Climate & Risk; Jon Tan spoke about Human Rights and Climate Change in July; Riley Forson hosted the September session, covering International Wildlife Trade & Zoonotic Diseases; in October, Andreas Wilder and Neha Harish spoke about the interaction between Sustainability & Competition Law; and last but not least, Harriet Hall explored Biodiversity Net Gain and Nature Recovery in the final knowledge session of the year.

: A screenshot from the October knowledge session showing the words from Jordan Sanchez’s poem On Climate Denial, which appears below Jordan’s face, as Jordan joined online from New York

We love the creative content in our knowledge sessions, which allow members to connect, feel, and step outside their professional selves to convene around issues in a deeper way. A real highlight for us this year was having Jordan Sanchez, the author of On Climate Denial (V3 Climate Group) (the creative content for the October KS on Competition Law & Sustainability) join us from New York to discuss what the poem meant to her (pictured above).

You can find more details of our 2024 sessions on our website and there are recordings of most sessions on our YouTube channel. Here’s some feedback received this year:

  • “I thought the content was excellent and a really interesting angle. It was definitely an educational experience for me.”
  • “Excellent quality of speakers involved – and interesting subject matter”
  • “…a good range of speakers and my god Paul Powesland was AMAZING!”

We are run completely by volunteers who give up their time alongside busy work and study lives, and we are so grateful to our facilitators and photographers who volunteer for our sessions. Finally, we’d love to hear from you with any ideas for your own knowledge session. Anyone can do it! Please reach out to us at legalvoicesforthefuture@gmail.com if you want a casual chat to run through ideas, or, if you’re ready, submit your proposal here. if you want a casual chat to run through ideas, or, if you’re ready, submit your proposal here.

Members-only webinar on Cooperatives and Co-operative law In October 2024, Cliff Mills – Consultant at Anthony Collins Solicitors LLP who works with member-based organisations on ownership and governance arrangements – hosted a members-only webinars on Cooperatives. We had a fantastic presentation about how cooperatives work, and then a discussion between Cliff and members about the types of cooperatives that exist, and how to increase the use of cooperatives in society for sustainability purposes.

: Large brown sacks of sugar and oatmeal surround a slate showing the seven Rochdale Principles written in chalk.

The session has had a lasting effect on LVF and the way we think about engaging with our amazing members, and word on the street is this webinar inspired one of our members to choose this topic for their Master’s dissertation!

Member webinars are more intimate and involve open discussion amongst members. As such, we aren’t sharing recordings – but please do get in touch if you’d like to discuss the content. On co-operatives, you can have a look at Cliff’s article on the subject which maps UK developments in cooperative and this article which gives a good overview of the foundations of cooperatives. We’re really looking forward to hosting more of these in 2025, and we have several planned already. If you have any ideas for your own members-only please do email us on legalvoicesforthefuture@gmail.com

BRAND NEW website and LinkedIn Community group

We launched our new website in September! Our website is designed to be a hub for LVF’s resources and events. Check out https://legalvoicesforthefuture.co.uk/ now. 

We also launched our LinkedIn Community group for members to connect with other members, consider recent knowledge sessions and the information shared, and create posts, share articles, and write about the knowledge sessions and creative content. Members can request to join the LinkedIn Community here.

COP29 series

LVF member Mathilda Lorkin, PhD candidate in environmental law at Queen Mary University of London, was at COP29 in Azerbaijan as part of the QMUL delegation. We featured a mini-series about her experiences on LinkedIn (see posts here and here), and our interview with Mathilda about her time on the ground at COP will be featuring in our inaugural blog post on our website. Among other things, Mathilda will be discussing the role of civil society there, and how importance youth delegations are at COPs.

A photo of LVF member Mathilda Lorkin with a microphone asking a question of panellists at COP29

If you have any questions for Mathilda do get in touch with Mathilda on her LinkedIn, or if you have any ideas for your own blog post for our website let us know via legalvoicesforthefuture@gmail.com.

Donations – Thank you!

We are currently completely run on donations! Thank you so much to our supporters on Ticketsource or BuyMeACoffee. We already have some overheads, but as LVF scales up our costs are going to increase. Therefore, if you’re able to, we’d love you to donate (maybe a Christmas present to LVF…?) via ourBuyMeACoffee page, either on a one off or monthly basis.

Looking ahead to next year…

We have big plans for LVF next year – we are aiming to become a Community Interest Company, hopefully secure external philanthropic funding to expand what we do, and we have some amazing knowledge sessions in the pipeline (including on AI and the environment, scaling nature-based investment, oceans and international law, and our first knowledge session “retreat” at Wakelyns Farm in May 2025). We also hope to expand member engagement through more structured feedback, and are exploring ways of growing and hearing from our community (you!). If you have ideas on how we should do this, please get in touch.

Comments

Leave a comment