CLIMATE AND ENVIRONMENT
The Earth Rights Research & Action program
The Earth Rights Research & Action (TERRA NYU Law) is a program at the Center dedicated to research, legal action, and interdisciplinary advocacy on ecological emergencies. Recognizing that time is limited, TERRA NYU Law collaborates with scholars, lawyers, advocates, scientists, and storytellers across diverse geographies and relevant disciplines – from biological and climate sciences to human rights law and international governance to Indigenous and multispecies justice advocacy – to pursue bold and experimental action on ecological challenges.
Guiding framework
Across its various projects, TERRA NYU Law applies an adaptive and experimental approach grounded on core guiding principles:
- prioritizing and working on legal strategies, tools, and practices that hold transformative potential for the field but currently lack mainstream attention, need further conceptual refinement, are stymied by North-South asymmetries, and so on.
- centering interdisciplinary, drawing from diverse legal, scientific, and philosophical traditions. In doing so, we bridge movements and disciplinary fields, thereby breaking down traditional silos and unlocking the greater potential for impact that emerges from collaboration and communication.
- making space for unconventional ideas that push the boundaries of legal imagination, directing the field towards new and underutilized strategies for the root drivers of ecological crises.
Much like the adaptive capacity of ecosystems reinforces their resilience and collective stability, the Earth Rights Research & Action iterates and adapts its programmatic agenda, methodologies, and practical approach to reflect the shifting socio-legal landscape.
ongoing projects
The Earth Rights Research & Action Program works across five primary lines of inquiry and engagement. It also includes the Earth Rights Research & Action Clinic (TERRA Clinic) for students enrolled at NYU School of Law.
Project
Climate Law Accelerator (CLX)
The Earth Rights Research & Action’s oldest line of work, CLX is a global collaborative hub that catalyzes legal strategies, tools, and ideas needed to secure urgent and ambitious climate action for climate research, advocacy, and strategic litigation.
Project
More than Human Rights (MOTH) Project
Advocating for more-than-human rights, the MOTH Project refines and advances an approach that embeds human rights and well-being within a larger concern for the biosphere and the web of life that sustains us all.
Project
Right to a Healthy Environment (R2HE)
In collaboration with partners like the UN Environment Programme, this initiative documents and analyzes trends and developments in the implementation and safeguarding of the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment.
Project
Indigenous Voices: Crossing The River podcast
TERRA NYU Law produces a podcast on Indigenous ideas, perspectives, and proposals on a range of topics, including resistance to extractive industries, new paradigms for governance, and proposals for legal and political action.
Project
Biodiversity & Rights
Through this line of engagement, TERRA NYU Law produces research and publications to advance the understanding of the link between biodiversity and rights, as well as runs legal workshops with partners to strategize and pursue legal actions and advocacy that address biodiversity loss and protect the diversity of life underpinning ecological health.
The Earth Rights Research & Action Clinic
TERRA NYU Law Clinic combines the tools and tactics of international environmental law and human rights to preserve the conditions for life on Earth for current and future generations of humans and non-humans. Working closely with NGOs, scientists, lawyers, social movements, UN agencies, and grassroots communities from around the world, TERRA NYU Law Clinic students work on cases and projects involving creative litigation in multiple jurisdictions, transnational advocacy campaigns, and strategic research and communications.
- Clinic projects entail a wide range of activities, including on-site fieldwork and data gathering, legal research, strategic planning with local and international networks, and creative communications and narratives work.
- Students conduct fieldwork contribute to the development of litigation tactics, help launch or nurture transnational advocacy networks and coalitions, and engage with scientists and experts in a wide range of institutions.
