MU Environment and Natural Resources Law Center

· Creating environment sensitive generation and environmental friendly development policies and laws that will enable present and future generations to live a prosperous and dignified life in a clean and healthy environment.

Mission

· Alerting the public about the need for environmental protection and the impacts of environmental problems and damages;

· Working for the adoption and enactment of laws that ensure the prevention of environmental damages and provide adequate and appropriate remedies whenever damage occurs to the environment;

· Becoming a major resource centre on environment and related issues by publishing research outputs and by providing the general public access to publications of all kinds, laws and policies on environment;

· Working in collaboration with governmental and nongovernmental organizations that work around environment related concerns;

· Initiating and assisting the establishment of environmental clubs, associations and centers and establishing a network among the same in different parts of Tigray and Ethiopia for the better protection of the environment and natural resources.

Objectives

· To organize and support training programs for stakeholders to tune in their policies, procedures and outcome in an environment friendly manner and ensure public participation on decisions that may affect the quality and nature of the environment and natural resources;

· To assist people to be the primary beneficiaries of their natural resources by upholding the relevant provisions of the Constitution;

· To extend free legal assistance to individuals or group of people who have been victimized by environmental problems and to those who are denied of their right to reasonable exploitation of their natural resources, and making sure that they get justice;

· To provide consultancy services to regional and federal institutions and private national and international organizations in the area of environmental and natural resources management and law;

· To create a knowledge base that helps raise the awareness of the public, the legislature, government officials, judges, legal practitioners, NGOs and other relevant organs on environmental issues;

· To help strengthen institutions, which function as positive pressure groups for the adoption of policies and laws that address existing and potential environmental concerns, and serve as a watchdog towards their effective enforcement.

To achieve these objectives, the Center has funded many researches that focus on the legal dimension of the environment and natural resources management. Findings of these researches have been the base for workshops that result in proceeding of this kind and also employed in trainings that the Center provides.

Besides, the Center also organizes moot competitions in its attempt to achieve one of its pillar objectives of raising the awareness of different stakeholders working on environmental and natural resources related issues. Accordingly, the Centre has organized a series of moot court competitions on selected environmental and natural resource law issues in Ethiopia. The Moots are organized with the aim of inculcating court culture and courtroom manners among law students and help them become conversant with issues related to environment and natural resource laws. The moot competitions that the Center organizes can be classified into two categories, namely in-house and national moot court competitions.

The Center has also opened and is running a masters program, which can deliver long term training to solve the shortage of qualified human resources in the country in general and in the region in particular. To this effect, the Center has facilitated the development of a curriculum for a postgraduate program on Natural Resources Governance. At present, the Program has graduated its first batch and admitted students in the regular and summer enrollment. It is also looking to partner with stakeholder institutions to train their staff.

In addition to its forgoing basic activities, the Center is always on the lookout for potential partners to work with both governmental and nongovernmental stakeholders. It is especially interested to work with organs who would like to associate with it in the areas of implementation of environmental and natural resource laws of the country and the region. In this regard, the Center has been partnering, among others, with the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate change (MEFCC) and the Tirgay Regional State Bureau of Land and Natural Resource Administration on many occasions.

In the area of advocacy, the Center is working with the view to providing legal service, consultancy and legal representation in issues relating to the environment and natural resources. The Center would like to invite potential interested partners to work on further providing awareness creation, advocacy and provision of free legal advice on environment and natural resource related cases and issues.