King's Human Rights and Environment Clinic

King’s Human Rights and Environment (HRE) Clinic mainly works with students on public interest cases and research projects at the intersection of environmental and human rights law. The priority is strategic interventions which can have an impact on the climate and nature emergency. We mostly accept referrals from environmental organisations and activists, e.g. Environmental Law Foundation and London Mining Network.

The HRE Clinic aims to complement the work of the Transnational Law Institute and the Climate Law and Governance Centre.

Collaboration is at the heart of ensuring the work has maximum impact, whether with civil society organisations and activists or other disciplines and universities. We often work with students and academics from King’s Geography Department. They collected water samples from a river in Serbia in the Bern Convention case referred to below.

We aim for equitable transnational exchanges with partners in the Global South. We are proud of our long-term partnership with the National University of Juridical Sciences in Kolkata, India collaborating with local lawyers and NGOs to tackle the impacts of extreme weather and rising sea levels in the Indian Sundarbans.

Cases may be supervised by solicitors within or outside the clinic, with input from barristers’ Chambers where appropriate. Current partners include Landmark Chambers, Doughty Street Chambers , Matrix Chambers, and Garden Court Chambers.

Internationally our legal interventions support communities adversely affected by multinational corporations, particularly those in the extractive industries. Ongoing projects include:

• An amicus curiae intervention challenging deforestation in Uganda, in collaboration with Greenwatch and Landmark Chambers in London;
• A ‘Rights of Nature’ complaint against a British company operating in Serbia, in collaboration with the NGO Earth Thrive with drafting and advocacy by Harj Narulla of Doughty Street Chambers;
• Working with the Environmental Law Foundation on behalf of local people and communities, such as Singleton Forest Watch to tackle methane pollution in the UK;
• Working with communities affected by river pollution to advance Rights of Nature using our Rivers toolkit.

If you have a human rights and environmental law issue which you think might be suitable for the clinic, please visit the Contact us page to find out how to get in touch.