UNEP has developed an active Judges Programme to build capacity of judges, magistrates, and other judicial officers to effectively decide cases relating to 
environmental law. Such capacity building is essential to the effective enforcement of environmental laws.
Starting in 1996, UNEP convened a series of regional judges symposia, which brought together chief justices and prosecutors from various States within each region to:
- examine developments in the field of national and international environmental law;
- exchange views, knowledge, and experience in promoting the further development and implementation of environmental law in each region; and
- review the role of the courts in promoting the rule of law in the area of sustainable development, including an examination of important judgments.
In 2001, UNEP’s 10-year Programme for the Development and Periodic Review of Environmental Law explicitly requested UNEP to undertake capacity building efforts targeted at “the judiciary [and] the legal profession”.
With this mandate and building upon the six successful regional symposia, UNEP organized and co-sponsored the Global Judges Symposium on Sustainable Development and the Role of Law, which was held in Johannesburg in 2002, immediately preceding the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD). 122 chief justices and senior judges from 60 States were invited to participate. The Global Judges Symposium discussed the role of the judiciary in the implementation of environmental law (including Principle 10 of the Rio Declaration addressing access to information, public participation, and access to justice), reviewed emerging environmental law jurisprudence, and identified specific needs for capacity strengthening at the national level. The Symposium adopted the Johannesburg Principles on the Role of Law and Sustainable Development, which call for the improvement of the capacity of judges, prosecutors, and other legal officers.
Following the Global Judges Symposium, UNEP convened a meeting in January 2003 to develop a plan for building judicial capacity around the world. The subsequent Regional Chief Justices Needs-Assessment and Planning Meetings have drawn up country-specific national programmes of work for strengthening judicial capacity in the area of environment and sustainable development, taking into account the different needs and context of each State, including varying legal systems, regulatory frameworks, economic situations, cultures, and histories.
Based on the outcomes of these regional assessments, UNEP has identified judicial sensitization and capacity building at the national level as the most crucial step. To address this need, UNEP has developed a “Train-the-Trainers Programme” that can be used to train legal stakeholders at a sub-regional level so that they can subsequently build capacity and sensitize the judiciary on environmental issues at national level. UNEP has also convened a number of national-level seminars to build judicial capacity.
In addition, UNEP is developing a series of environmental law training materials, to be translated into the six official languages of the UN. These materials include an Environmental Law Training Manual giving an introduction to contemporary environmental law, a Judges’ Handbook on Environmental Law, and selected collections of international and national environmental legislation and judicial cases from around the world. For instance, in African States, UNEP has developed, as part of the Partnership for the Development of Environmental Law and Institutions in Africa (PADELIA), 11 volumes of a Compendia of Environmental Laws, as well as 4 volumes of a Compendia of Judicial Decisions on Matters Related to the Environment (available at http://www.unep.org/
padelia/publications/publication.htm). All of these documents aim at providing detailed reference materials on environmental law to judges, prosecutors, and other stakeholders such as private advocates, universities, and NGOs.
At the WSSD, UNEP and IUCN-The World Conservation Union announced the creation of an on-line Judicial Portal, through which judges could upload and access the texts of relevant environmental decisions and exchange other relevant information. Available at http://www.iucn.org/portal/elc/, the portal is for the moment only accessible to a restricted network of judges and members of IUCN’s Commission on Environmental Law.
For more information on UNEP’s Judges Programme, see http://www.unep.org/DPDL/Law/
Programme_work/Judges_programme/index.asp or contact envlaw@unep.org. For information on judicial capacity-building in the PADELIA framework, see http://www.unep.org/padelia or contact padelia.africa@unep.org.