17 - Beyond Litigation: the Need for Creativity in Working to Realise Environmental Rights

Summary

Environmental harm is one of the biggest challenges facing communities living in poverty across the world. Unfortunately, in developing strategies to combat environmental harm, lawyers who support such communities often focus purely on litigation. Yet there are many reasons for litigation's not being ideally suited to the environmental context. These include the need for speed to avert irreversible harm quickly; difficulty in quantifying and proving environmental harm using conventional legal tests; the very technical subject matter, with which judges are often unfamiliar; and the challenge of securing scientific experts. Fortunately, litigation is not the only option, and a wealth of alternative strategies to realise environmental rights exists. Using the campaign to protect the Mapungubwe World Heritage Site in South Africa as a case study, the chapter examines three alternatives: the linkages between advocacy campaigns and company share price; community learning exchanges; and an interesting model for collaboratively monitoring compliance by mining companies.