The ELC trains the next generation of public interest environmental lawyers

Annual Reports

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Our Annual Reports provide an overview of our work and impact.

• Annual Reports, ELC

2023-24 Annual Report

As we take an end-of-fiscal-year deep breath, we’re also taking a moment to reflect. If we had to choose a theme for this past year, it would have to be transition. Along with our usual activities of teaching students and helping…

Read More2023-24 Annual Report

• July 2, 2024

• Annual Reports, ELC

2022-23 Annual Report

Over the year, we offered three sessions of the Clinic and a Spring Intensive Clinic. We mentored 35 Clinic students, who provided over 3,131 hours of legal services to 25 client groups. In total, ELC staff, Articling Students, Coop students…

Read More2022-23 Annual Report

• June 30, 2023

• Annual Reports, ELC

2021-22 Annual Report

A review of highlights from 2021-22, a year where we resumed in-person teaching and welcomed new members to the ELC team, helping us to deliver over 6,500 hours of pro bono legal services to Indigenous and community organizations across BC.

Read More2021-22 Annual Report

• June 30, 2022

Our History

Thanks to the vision and dedication of many students, faculty, community members and foundations, the ELC Society has provided pro bono legal services to a wide range of community groups, conservation organizations and First Nations across the province and beyond since 1996.

The original goals of the ELC were to engage in community outreach and provide legal research to environmental groups and the public. To support these goals, students created a Committee to oversee office operations, raise and administer funds and ensure that projects complied with a set of principles.

While many of its original core values remain the same, much has changed about the ELC as an organization over the past 10 years. We have put careful thought into the “how” and “why” of what we do, established accountability and transparency measures, and evolved how we teach the Clinic. We have invested significant time and resources in developing a strong team.

ELC Statement on Anti-Oppressive Practice and Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion

In the pursuit and support of the restoration, protection, and health of ecological systems for all, the ELC is committed to anti-oppressive practices and policies that promote environmental justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion in our work and in the spaces that we hold and create around our work. We are working within and against systems of oppression and recognize that not all people have equal voice in decision making that affects our environment and our communities.  

The ELC recognizes that the practice of environmental law and environmental movements relating to state law in British Columbia have colonial origins and have largely lacked diversity. These orientations weaken environmental law and the broader movements to which it contributes, especially within the areas of our core work: healthy lands, waters and governance.  The ELC is committed to understanding this context and taking appropriate action to address it in our work.

Some of the ways that we attend to anti-oppression, justice, equity, diversity and inclusion in the work of the ELC is to use decolonial frameworks, include acknowledging and including Indigenous authorities, and to amplify, work with, and learn from traditionally marginalized perspectives and experiences. We use the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as a standard for our work. We apply these approaches during our intake process for new cases and devote a portion of our work to supporting Indigenous organizations and Nations. We also seek to expand the diversity of the clients with whom we work.

More About Anti-Oppressive practice and Environmental Justice

Anti-oppressive practice addresses the sociocultural, political and economic power imbalances inherent in organizations to support an inclusive environment. It includes strategies that aim to address racist, anti-Indigenous, and other forms of discrimination and oppression. Environmental justice builds on the principles of equal treatment under the law to identify and address the unequal application of state environmental laws to marginalized and Indigenous communities, which results in harm to those communities. Not only are these communities disproportionally impacted by environmental harms, but they also face greater barriers in accessing justice for those harms. Recognizing that humans and ecosystems are intertwined, environmental justice includes responsibilities to ensure healthy ecosystems and equity in access to those ecosystems. Environmental justice that includes Indigenous peoples goes beyond impacts on individuals to include the right to self-government and the ability to exercise Indigenous legal orders, which includes responsibilities for ecological health.

We make the distinction between anti-oppressive practice as how we interact with and cultivate relationships with one another within the ELC, and justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion as the organizational policies and practices through which we operate and govern.

Acknowledgements & Affirmations

• Healthy ecosystems are the foundation of all communities.
• A healthy environment includes acknowledging Indigenous authorities and working to deconstruct the colonial norms of state environmental law.
• Everyone deserves equitable access to and the benefits from healthy ecosystems.
• Environmental justice is critical to the long-term health of the ecosystems and people of British Columbia.
• In British Columbia, state law largely fails to respect Indigenous laws and authorities, and it grants privilege and access to the environment unequally. The resulting colonial impacts, inequity and injustice must be addressed and changed.
• The nature of our work as lawyers who are trained and work within the state legal order both limits and underscores the actions we take to learn new ways of knowing and working together to undo the systemic harms embedded in the practice of law.
• Equity, diversity, and inclusion in legal representation, access to justice, and advocacy are essential to ensuring that the ways that we address ecological health supports Indigenous authorities and environmental justice.
• We hold ourselves accountable because acknowledging and challenging inequities and working in partnership is how we will create a more equitable society.
• The context within which we work, and the purposes of our organization, establish the boundaries for our legal services. We acknowledge that there are many organizations and communities who deserve our attention and with whom we do not have the capacity to work regularly.

ELC’s Commitments

To provide informed, authentic leadership for healthy ecosystems, we strive to…

1. Pursue cultural consciousness throughout our organization through substantive learning and formal, transparent policies.
2. Acknowledge and dismantle any inequities in our policies, systems, programs, and services, and report organizational progress.
3. Commit time and resources to expand more diverse leadership within our board, staff, and advisory bodies.
4. Ensure that at least 30 percent of our work capacity is devoted to support Indigenous organizations and First Nations who are pursuing projects within our purpose and scope.

ELC staff and board members worked collectively to draft this statement. Anti-oppressive, justice, equity, diversity and inclusive practices are ongoing and always a work in progress. We will review our actions and outcomes at minimum every three years as part of our strategic planning process.

We encourage feedback about whether your interactions with us exemplified these commitments. You can give feedback to Holly Pattison at [email protected] or Gracie Chiu at [email protected].