Law Clinics’ Global Day of Action for Climate Justice

Swansea Law Clinic has taken part in the last two Law Clinics’ Global Day of Action for Climate Justice, which is held on the 17th November each year. Law Clinics around the world use the day to highlight a certain topic/issue in relation to climate justice – in whatever way they are able to. To mark the day, which last year focused on the Rights of Nature and this year focused on Plastics, a group of our volunteers worked to gather quotes and comments from a wide range of sources to share on the day as part of a Twitter Takeover of the Clinic Twitter account. The aim being to get people reading about, and then hopefully thinking about, the topic on the day.

In 2020, Clinic volunteers collected comments from academics from the School of Law who specialise in rights of nature/environmental law and other departments within the university, students, the University’s student Tree Society and Student Union Environmental Officer and the Youth Strike for Climate Swansea group. Together with Professor Richard Owen, they presented a paper ‘Sustainability and the University Law Clinic’ at an online symposium, Sustainability Symposium: Facing Forward with Sustainability: Principles, Progress and Partnership on 25th March 2021, which was organised by Advance HE.

In 2021, Clinic volunteers collected quotes from academics from the School of Law who specialise in rights of nature/environmental law, fellow students, a local Beach Clean organiser and the University’s Waste and Recycling Officer. We were also able to share a blog written by one of the volunteers, who had recently represented Wales at a COP26 and Beyond event, debating how ‘The Law could help us fix Climate Change’.