The Strathclyde Centre for Environmental Law & Governance (SCELG) embodies the long-standing tradition of research, knowledge-exchange and teaching of environmental law within the socially progressive Strathclyde Law School. Established in 2012, we have earned a reputation for advancing understanding and share knowledge of the role of law across different levels and sites of environmental governance. Much of our teaching and knowledge-exchange is geared towards real-world needs identified in ongoing multilateral environmental negotiations, as well as in Sustainability and equity play a decisive role in Strathclyde Centre for Environmental Law & Governance’s work international, transnational, national and local practice. We investigate the interactions of a multitude of specialised and multi-layered environmental regimes, in order to identify opportunities and risks towards realising sustainability and equity. 

Our research builds on the above approaches and seeks exploring new directions and paradigms for sustainability, which revolve around the notion of Global Environmental Law (GEL). The focus of our research is increasingly shifting towards theories and methodologies to decolonise GEL, so that the ‘global’ is inclusive and progressive. Our research is therefore open to, and keenly interested in engaging with, other non-Western worldviews. 

To that end, we comprise a group of experts in global environmental law exploring legal and theoretical foundations for the governance of socio-ecological challenges that range from the local to the planetary level. Our team features experts in biodiversity, climate change, forests, oceans & fisheries, land & food, water, human rights, environmental justice, and corporate accountability. These themes are explored in international, EU, regional, national and sub-national law, including the customary laws of indigenous peoples and local communities. 

We not only draw from our academic research, but also from our direct involvement in multilateral environmental negotiations, consultancies to the United Nations and other international organisations, legal advice to developing countries on reforms of natural resource laws, and collaborations with non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and indigenous peoples’ and local communities’ organisations. At the same time, we also have a track record of partnerships with the Scottish Government and the Scottish Sentencing Council.

SCELG is built on three inter-related pillars: 

• agenda-setting research cutting across traditional disciplinary boundaries furthering equity, sustainability, and the decolonisation of environmental law
• innovative teaching focused on the inter-connections of environmental law at different levels and sites, which is geared towards students’ employability
• systematic engagement with partners outside academia (local, regional and international actors) to co-identify strategic directions for knowledge-exchange targeting real-life knowledge gaps