Invitation to take part in an online focus group on legal capacity for oceans protection
Dear Pacific law colleagues,
My name is Julie Melrose, Special Counsel at the Environmental Defenders Office (Australia), based in Samoa. I am also a new co-chair of PacNEL.
I am writing to invite your participation in a scoping study assessing the current and future legal capacity for ocean conservation in the Asia-Pacific region.
The project is a global collaboration led by four organizations: Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide (ELAW), the Asian Research Institute for Environmental Law (ARIEL), Natural Justice (NJ), and the Interamerican Association for Environmenta
l Defense (AIDA). ARIEL (Rocky Guzman and Coleen Salamat) and EDO (Julie Melrose) co-lead the work for Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Together, the organizations aim to better understand the current and future state of legal capacity within civil society and public institutions working on ocean issues.
The project seeks to bridge local, national, and regional insights with a shared global vision to develop an inclusive and effective legal strategy, a 30-year vision for ocean protection and conservation for marine conservation. It aims to strengthen legal capacity by assessing needs through participatory dialogue, resulting in region-specific recommendations. Further information, including the key questions we are asking, are attached in an Information Sheet for the project.
A Global Advisory Committee, convened by ELAW, will help to synthesize the findings of our consultations through regional recommendations and provide feedback on a set of global recommendations for legal and capacity-building efforts. This work is being supported by the Paul M. Angell Family Foundation.
In the Pacific, we have several small online focus group discussions available for you to join, followed by an in-person roundtable being held in Fiji later in the year (details to come at a later time). The following dates and times are available for the online focus groups:
March 6th 3:00 - 4:30pm - Samoa time (GMT+13)
March 10th 3:00 - 4:30pm - Samoa time (GMT +13)
Should you be available to join us, please RSVP by emailing me: Julie.Melrose.Consultant@edo.org.au
Please also feel free to forward this invitation to any oceans law or policy colleagues that you know of who may be interested in taking part.
Should you not be available at the above days and times, but still wish to participate, please email me and we can arrange a 1-1 call or another focus group discussion at a time that suits you.
We look forward to discussing the important work you all do for protecting oceans and hearing your insights and ideas for the future.
Kind regards,
Julie Melrose