Natural Justice is working with communities in Africa, Asia, and Latin America to support them in the governance and management of their territories, areas, and natural resources in a sustainable manner. While international regulatory frameworks are important for dealing with modern global concerns such as biodiversity loss and climate change, their implementation requires careful calibration at the local level to ensure the environmental gains and social justice that they are intended to deliver. The local implementation of environmental legal frameworks is most likely to lead to environmental and social benefits when Indigenous peoples and local communities have the rights to self-determination and to free, prior and informed consent over any activities undertaken on their lands or resources, and when they are able to ensure that any activities or agreements reflect their underlying biocultural values. Without communities’ input, there exists significant potential for laws intended to promote the overarching aims of the Rio Conventions to instead further undermine the communities that have most contributed to local adaptation and the conservation of biodiversity and least contributed to climate change.

The legal and biocultural empowerment of communities is therefore the indispensable condition of the local integrity of international environmental law. Natural Justice argues that the development of laws and guidelines at the international level focus disproportionately on protecting the environment and traditional knowledge without also empowering the communities who live among and customarily use biodiversity. Thus, Natural Justice works with individual communities where we have had a direct request for assistance, as well as coordinating regional initiatives with groups of communities who are working together to develop and refine the theory and practice of biocultural community protocols. Our collaboration with communities informs our work at the (sub-)national and international levels and at the same time, we draw on our national and international experience to improve the substance and methodology of our legal empowerment programmes.