We advocate for strong material environmental law that respects planetary boundaries and highlight the structural deficiencies of existing environmental laws.
Strong environmental law ensures a good and just future for all. GLI enables civil society to understand the law and use it for the common good.
Our ongoing projects focus on strengthening environmental law in various areas:
The anthropogenic climate crisis poses an existential threat to us all. Even an average global temperature increase of 1.5° Celsius has serious consequences. This is why we work on climate action. We monitor the German and European climate laws and use constitutional principles and human rights to defend climate policies against weakenings. We develop legal arguments for environmental NGOs and use insights from climate litigation cases all over the world. In doing that, we also support them in implementing and advancing the European Green Deal.
In the project “Comprehensible Law: Legal Education for Environmentally-minded Civil Society,” we provide information on various aspects of environmental law. The aim is to promote the enforcement of democratically adopted environmental law. We want to strengthen the capacities of environmentally-minded civil society to work effectively towards the implementation of existing environmental law. Part of this project includes free environmental law consultations and the provision of information material on topics such as climate law, greenwashing, and criminal law relating to the environment.
Since redirecting investments toward environmentally and climate-friendly industries is the key lever for the success of the Green New Deal, we also focus on corporate law related to the environment. This includes, for example, CSRD, CSDDD, EU taxonomy, SFDR, the Deforestation Regulation, and the Empowering Consumers Directive. We advocate for strong environment-related corporate law and strengthen its enforcement through capacity building.
We are currently critically monitoring legal developments at the EU level with regard to the Omnibus and coordinating with other NGOs to counteract the planned deregulation. In the future, we will offer training events on environment-related corporate law and publish briefings.
Europe’s forests, wetlands, rivers and other ecosystems are essential infrastructure. They protect communities, support the economy and reduce climate and financial risks. The proposed Essential Infrastructure Plan would make nature measurable and investable through trusted data, coordinated regulation, financial incentives and priority restoration projects. Its aim is to mobilise public and private capital while strengthening existing environmental protections.
The project brings together partners with complementary expertise in environmental law, policy development, data infrastructure, finance, economic modelling, strategic advocacy, and political engagement. Together, they combine the analytical capacity needed to develop ambitious yet practical solutions with the experience required to navigate complex legislative and political processes.
These are our current English language publications. For a full list of our publications please visit Publikationen.