International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)

The IUCN is a membership union uniquely composed of both government and civil society organizations. It provides public, private, and non-governmental organizations with the knowledge and tools that enable human progress, economic development, and nature conservation to take place together. Created in 1948, the IUCN has evolved into the world’s largest and most diverse environmental network. It harnesses the experience, resources, and reach of its 1,300 member organizations and the input of over 10,000 experts. The IUCN is the global authority on the status of the natural world and the measures needed to safeguard it. Our experts are organized into six commissions dedicated to species survival, environmental law, protected areas, social and economic policy, ecosystem management, and education and communication. The IUCN Environmental Law Programme (ELP) comprises the World Commission on Environmental Law (WCEL) and the Environmental Law Centre (ELC), which collaborate in their endeavours with the IUCN Academy of Environmental Law. The mission of the ELP is to advance environmental law through the development of legal concepts and instruments and to facilitate the use of environmental law as a tool to influence, encourage, and assist societies throughout the world to conserve the integrity and diversity of nature and to ensure that any use of natural resources is equitable and ecologically sustainable. The ELP is an integrated program of activities that assists decision-makers with information, legal analysis, advisory services, legislative drafting, mentoring, and capacity building at the national, regional, and global levels.